Studying On The Symptom Structure Of PTSD And It’s Influence Factors Among Chinese Breast Cancer Patients

Objective: Breast cancer has a high prevalence worldwide,and the posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD)of breast cancer patients seriously affects their treatment compliance,life satisfication,and even their life expectancy,which brings heavy burden to the society and family.However,the symptom structure of PTSD and its influence factor among the breast cancer patients was still unclear,and it is necessary to further explore it to facilitate the diagnosis and intervention of PTSD in breast cancer patients.Methods: In this study,we obtained a total of 258 cases of breast cancer patients as the research subjects from January 1,2020 to February 28,2021,and adopted questionnaire investigation method.The questionnaires pachage mainly included:patient’s social demography and a part of patient’s medical conditions,PTSD checklist,Fear of cancer progression questionnaire,Ruminant questionnaire of emotional regulation strategies,Self-disclosure questionnaire,Social support questionnaire and Depression questionnaire.The data was analyzed by means of factor analysis,ANOVA,multiple regression and other methods.Results: The first substudy shows that the incidence of PTSD in breast cancer patients was 42.6%,and the symptoms of PTSD in all dimensions were at a medium and low level.The 7-factor PTSD hybrid model has best fitting index and item loading,showing good structural validity and external validity.It is the best symptom structure model of PTSD for this sample,which including intrusive symptoms,avoidance symptoms,negative emotional symptoms,anhedonia symptoms,externalized behavior,anxiety arousal symptoms,irritable arousal symptoms.In second substudy,we find that different age has no significant predictive effect on the total scores of PTSD and their symptom dimensions.High-income patient has lower level of PTSD avoidance and negative emotional symptoms.In the intermediate and advanced stage of breast cancer patients,the level of intrusive symptoms,negative emotional symptoms,anhedonia,externalized behavior,irritable arousal symptoms are higher than those in early stages.Fear of cancer Progression played a significant positive predicting function on PTSD scores,and on their intrusive symptoms,negative emotional symptoms,anhedonia,and irritable arouseal symptoms.Invasive rumination on PTSD scores and their symptoms has significant positive predictive value.Self-disclosure and social support has significantly negative predicting function on PTSD scores and their different symptoms.Conclusion: The 7-factor hybrid model of PTSD is the best symptom structure model of PTSD among breast cancer patients,provides a theoretical support and guidance for the accurate diagnosis of PTSD,can be extended to the PTSD diagnosis of breast cancer patients,to help early screening and draw up targeted intervention strategies.This study also finds that the patient’s fear of cancer progression and invasive rumination are the risk factors for PTSD,while self-disclosure and social support are protective factors for PTSD.The PTSD among breast cancer patients is heterogeneous in family income and disease stage,but not in age.These results remind us that it is necessary to provide patients with social support to improve their self-disclosure and to cultivate other positive factors.At the same time,providing psychological intervention can reduce the fear of cancer progression,and relieve other risk factors such as invasive rumination,therefore,alleviate the symptoms of PTSD for breast cancer patients.