Abstract:

This study investigated personality traits, anxiety and depression as predictors of quality of life among breast cancer patients in UCH, Ibadan. Quality of life (QoL) is an important outcome measurement when evaluating the results of cancer treatment. It is a multidimensional concept that measures the satisfaction of a person with a wide range of aspects.

The study made use of cross-sectional design. 247 participants took part in the study. Two hypotheses generated and tested with appropriate inferential statistical tools and results are presented.

Results indicated that, personality factors (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism and conscientiousness) jointly predicted quality of life among breast cancer patients in UCH, Ibadan at {R=.265; R² = .070; F(5,241)= 3.630; p<.05}. However, the result of the independent prediction indicates that extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness have significant independent influence on quality of life among breast cancer patients in UCH, Ibadan at (p<.05) while openness and neuroticism did not produce significant independent influence on quality of life (p>.05). Also, the result shows that anxiety and depression jointly and independently predicted quality of life among breast cancer patients in UCH, Ibadan at {R=.976; R² = .953; F (2,244) = 2451.96; p<.01}.

Personality traits, anxiety and depression are significant predictors of quality of life among breast cancer patients. Introduction of psycho-therapy and counselling psychology would help ameliorate the psychopathological symptoms of cancer patients. However, there is need for collaborative partnership between the primary physicians and clinical psychologists in order to achieve high treatment prognosis.

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