Resilience, Social Support, and Anxious Preoccupation in Patients with Advanced Cancer during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This study examines the mediating role of social support between anxious preoccupation and resilience in patients with cancer during COVID-19. NEOetic_SEOM is a prospective, multicenter study involving individuals with advanced, unresectable cancer who completed the following scales: Resilience (BCRS), Social Support (Duke-UNC-11), and anxious preoccupation subscale of the Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer (M-MAC) before starting antineoplastic treatment. Between March 2020 and July 2021, 507 patients (55% male; mean age, 65) were recruited. No differences in resilience were observed based on sociodemographic or clinical characteristics. Social support in people with advanced, unresectable cancer promotes both decreased anxious preoccupation and greater resilience.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• cancer
• COVID-19
• resilience
• social support

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Neoetic study researchers and the Bioethics Section of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM) for their contribution to this study. We would like to thank Priscilla Chase Duran for editing and translating the manuscript, the IRICOM team for the support of the website registry and specially Natalia G Cateriano and Miguel Vaquero.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Principality of Asturias (May 17, 2019) and by the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) (identification code: L34LM-MM2GH-Y925U-RJDHQ).

The study has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. This study is an observational, non-interventionist trial.

Consent to participate

Signed informed consent was obtained from all patients.

Consent for publication

Informed consent and approval by the national competent authorities includes permission for publication and diffusion of the data.

Author contributions

A.R., C.C., and P.J.F. developed the project, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript. The other authors recruited patients and provided clinical information, comments, and improvements to the manuscript.

All authors participated in the interpretation and discussion of data, and the critical review of the manuscript.

Transparency declaration

The lead author states that this manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported. The reporting of this work is compliant with STROBE guidelines. The lead author states that no important aspects of the study have been omitted and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest related to the scope of this work.

Data availability statement

Statistical analyses were performed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, 25.0 version (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Armonk, NY: IBM Corp). The code is available upon request to the authors.

Patients are identified by an encrypted code known only to the local researcher. The code of the analyses is available upon request to the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is funded by the FSEOM (Spanish Society of Medical Oncology Foundation) grant for Projects of the Collaborative Groups in 2018 and by an Astra Zeneca grant.