COVID-19 pandemic stress, tolerance of uncertainty and well-being for persons with and without cancer

Abstract

Stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic has implications for mental and physical well-being, but especially for persons with cancer. The stress mitigating role of tolerance of uncertainty (TU) was investigated in those with and without a cancer diagnosis. Design: 155 persons with and 150 without a cancer diagnosis completed measures of pandemic stress and TU (mediating variable). Main Outcome Measures: Measures of emotional and physical well-being (WB) were the outcome variables. Results: The mediated, indirect effect of TU in the pandemic stress-emotional WB relationship was significant for the cancer group and the non-cancer group. However, the indirect effects involving TU in the pandemic stress-physical WB relationship was not significant for the cancer group, whereas TU fully mediated the pandemic stress-physical WB relationship for the non-cancer group. Conclusions: Whereas TU was active as a mediator with emotional WB for both groups, it was ineffective as a mediator of the pandemic stress-physical WB relationship with the cancer group. Thus, the cancer group’s physical WB was determined exclusively by pandemic stress. Stress reduction and enhancing TU may be critical for all people but for those with cancer decreasing pandemic stress would provide the most viable option for increasing physical well-being.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• tolerance for uncertainty
• quality of life
• pandemic stress
• well-being

Availability of data

Deposited in CurateND repository: doi:10.7274/r0-jazs-zt28

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics approval

This project was approved by the IRB of the University of Notre Dame (HSIRB 20-04-5992).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Harper Cancer Research Institute. The authors would like to thank M. Sharon Stack, Director; S. Andrew Bullock, Associate Director and Khoa Huynh, Research Program Manager of the Harper Cancer Institute for their support for this research project.