Background: Breast cancer is considered as the most common as well as most effective malignancy in
adult female population, has leaded to deep psychological and emotional problems such as depression,
anxiety and stress. One of the possible factors lead to develop of depression, anxiety and stress in people
based on cognitive models, is the cognitive distortions and dysfunctional attitudes towards the situation.
The components included high prevalence and huge effects of breast cancer´s depression, anxiety and
stress on different aspect as well as key role of dysfunctional attitudes in development of these elements;
encouraged us to design and perform a study with aim to investigation the dysfunctional attitudes and its´
relationship with stress, anxiety and depression in breast cancer patients referred to a specialized cancer
hospital Isfahan, Iran.
Methods: This descriptive, analytic cross sectional study was conducted on cancer patients who were
selected using simple sampling. A total number of 297 hospitalized patients with breast cancer were
enrolled in 6 months. The clinical and demographic characteristics information, dysfunctional attitudes
questionnaire (DAS-26) and the depression, anxiety, and stress scale (DASS-42) were used. All analyses
were performed with descriptive and analytic statistical methods in SPSS for Windows 18.0 (SPSS Inc.,
Chicago, IL, USA).
Findings: Mean scores of dysfunctional attitudes were 87.35 (27.53). Also mean scores of stress, anxiety
and depression were 14.16 (9.38), 11.64 (8.27) and 12.06 (9.52) relatively. Based on study findings there
was a statistically significant relationship between dysfunctional attitudes with stress, anxiety and
depression in patients with breast cancer.
Conclusion: With regard to results of this study, breast cancer patients with higher scores dysfunctional
attitudes had more stress, anxiety and depression. In addition low dysfunctional attitudes score was an
important protecting factor against stress, anxiety and depression in these patients
