Open to Exploration? Association of Personality Factors With Complementary Therapy Use After Breast Cancer Treatment

Overview

Journal Integr Cancer Ther

Publisher Sage Publications

Specialties Oncology
Pharmacology

Date 2018 Jan 25

PMID 29361852

Citations 4

Authors

Kirsti I Toivonen

Rie Tamagawa

Michael Speca

Joanne Stephen

Linda E Carlson

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: Many cancer survivors seek complementary therapies (CTs) to improve their quality of life. While it is well-known that women who are younger, more highly educated, and have higher incomes are more likely to use CTs, individual differences such as personality factors have been largely unexplored as predictors of CT use.

Methods: In a secondary analysis of a larger study, 270 women with stage I to III breast cancer completed self-report measures of demographic and illness-related information, personality variables, and use of several different types of CTs. A series of logistic regression models were used to explore whether demographic, illness-related, and personality variables predicted different types of CT use.

Results: Prior relationships between education and CT use were replicated. There were no significant relationships between illness-related variables and different types of CT use. Of the 5 personality factors, only openness to experience was a significant predictor of multiple types of CT use.

Conclusions: Openness to experience may represent an individual difference variable that predicts CT use among cancer survivors. CTs themselves may represent a form of intellectual curiosity and novelty seeking. Further studies are needed to replicate and examine the generalizability of the relationship between openness to experience and CT use in oncology populations.

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