Significant levels of distress usually accompany the entire cancer experience, affecting the patients' general functioning and adaptation to illness.
Objective: The major objective of the present study was to investigate potential demographic and intrapersonal moderators of the relationship between knowing the cancer diagnosis and the level of depression experienced.
Method: The present research has a transversal comparative repeated cross-sectional design (2006-2014), sampling following the proportional quota method. Research was conducted in the four major oncological institutes in Romania, obtaining a national sample of cancer patients, maintaining gender and ethnic rates, and permitting the investigation of the stability of the results from one assessment to the other.
Results: Results indicate that in the Romanian context, knowing the diagnosis is associated with a lower level of depression than not knowing the diagnosis, the results being similar in both assessments (2006-2014). Furthermore, from the explored demographic factors (gender, residence, age, and education), only age has a main effect upon depression (depression increasing with age), while education is the only factor from those analyzed, which has a moderator effect. Regarding the analyzed intra-individual variables, only dysfunctional attitudes, emotion-focused coping, and lack of emotional support from the family (loneliness) have main effects upon the level of depression (i.e., higher levels of dysfunctional attitudes, emotion-focused coping, and loneliness are associated with higher levels of depression), while neither of them has a moderator effect on the relationship between knowing the diagnosis and depression.
Conclusion: These results are important in the improvement of the doctor-patient relationship, the management of cancer-related distress, and implicitly for the course of illness. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.