THE ROLE OF DENIAL AND ALEXITHYMIA ON PAIN PERCEPTION IN WOMEN WITH BREAST CANCER

Breast cancer is one of the most common and serious problems in women health
in which pain is one of the most obvious manifestations that is influenced by many internal and
external factors. Hence, the current study was conducted to determine the role of denial and
Alexithymia on pain perception in women with breast cancer.
Materials & Methods: This correlational study was conducted on all women with breast cancer who
referred to the clinical centers of Namazi Hospital in Shiraz at the second half of 2014. Considering
the inclusion criteria like subjects’ age between 18 to 60 and the guidance school education as the
minimum level of education, a number of 50 patients with breast cancer were selected by the method
of purposive sampling method. The subjects were asked to respond to cancer denial interview, fill out
the questionnaires of Alexithymia, and the visual assessment scale of pain individually. The collected
data were analyzed by tests of Pearson correlation coefficients and multistage regression.
Results: The findings showed that pain is negatively and significantly correlated with denial (P<0/001,
r=-0/52) and positively and significantly correlated with Alexithymia (P<0/01, r=0/40) and difficulty
in identifying feeling (component of Alexithymia) (P<0/05, r=0/30). Regression analysis results also
showed that 43% of the whole variance of pain can be explained by denial and Alexithymia.
Conclusion: The results showed the role of denial and Alexithymia on the level of pain perception in
women with breast cancer which expresses the importance of psychological factors on the level of
pain perception in these patients.