Department of Health Psychology, School of Health Professions, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65212, USA.
J Rural Health. 2010 Fall;26(4):402-5. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-0361.2010.00295.x.
The present research examined the extent to which rural residence and social support seeking are associated with quality of life (QOL) among breast cancer patients following chemotherapy.
Female breast cancer patients (n = 46) from communities of varying degrees of rurality in a Midwestern state completed psychological and QOL measures at 1-month postchemotherapy. Analyses assessed the relationships between QOL outcomes, rurality, and social support seeking.
Using age and education as covariates, regression analyses were conducted to determine the extent to which QOL was related to social support seeking and rural/urban residence. Analyses revealed that social support seeking was associated with lower scores on multiple indices of QOL, and it was associated with higher self-reported symptoms of depression. Several significant associations with rural/urban residence were noted as well. Specifically, increasing rurality, as defined by USDA Rural-Urban continuum codes, was associated with lower overall QOL, lower functional well-being, and increased complaints of breast cancer specific symptoms.
These findings highlight the relevance of continued efforts to address social support needs among women with a history of breast cancer living in rural and urban communities. They also suggest that individuals in more rural communities may be at risk for lowered QOL in the early period following cancer treatment. Future research is needed to replicate these results with larger and more diverse samples of rural and urban dwelling individuals, and to determine whether these effects may be attributed to identifiable characteristics of rural communities (eg, fewer cancer-related resources).
本研究考察了农村居住环境和寻求社会支持与乳腺癌患者化疗后生活质量（QOL）的关系。
来自美国中西部一个州不同农村程度社区的女性乳腺癌患者（n=46）在化疗后 1 个月完成了心理和 QOL 测量。分析评估了 QOL 结果、农村性和寻求社会支持之间的关系。
使用年龄和教育作为协变量，进行回归分析以确定 QOL 与寻求社会支持和农村/城市居住之间的关系程度。分析显示，寻求社会支持与 QOL 多个指标的得分较低相关，与自我报告的抑郁症状较高相关。还注意到与农村/城市居住有关的几个显著关联。具体而言，根据美国农业部农村-城市连续体代码定义的农村程度增加与整体 QOL 降低、功能健康状况降低以及乳腺癌特异性症状增加有关。
这些发现强调了继续努力满足农村和城市社区有乳腺癌病史的女性社会支持需求的重要性。它们还表明，在癌症治疗后早期，更农村社区的个人可能面临 QOL 降低的风险。需要进一步的研究来复制这些结果，以获得更大和更多样化的农村和城市居民样本，并确定这些影响是否可以归因于农村社区的可识别特征（例如，癌症相关资源较少）。
