Lung cancer stigma, depression, and quality of life among ever and never smokers

Abstract

Purpose: In 2010, lung cancer is expected to be the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women. Because survival rates are increasing, an evaluation of the effects of treatment on quality of life (QOL) is an important outcome measure. In other diseases, stigma is known to have a negative impact on health status and QOL and be amenable to intervention. This is the first study to compare levels of lung cancer stigma (LCS) and relationships between LCS, depression, and QOL in ever and never smokers.

Method: A total of 192 participants with a self-report diagnosis of lung cancer completed questionnaires online.

Results: Strong associations in the expected directions, were found between LCS and depression (r = 0.68, p < 0.001) and QOL (r = -0.65, p < 0.001). No significant differences were found in demographic characteristics or study variables between ever smokers and never smokers. A simultaneous multiple regression with 5 independent variables revealed an overall model that explained 62.5% of the total variance of QOL (F5,168 = 56.015, P < 0.001).

Conclusions: After removing age, gender, and smoking status, depression explained 22.5% of the total variance of QOL (F4,168 = 100.661, p < 0.001). It is expected that depression and LCS would share some of the explanation of the variance of QOL, the correlation between LCS and depression is 0.629 (p < 0.001), however, LCS provides a unique and significant explanation of the variance of QOL over and above that of depression, age, gender, and smoking status, by 2.1% (p < 0.001).

Fig. 1

Model of Health Related Stigma in people with lung cancer (adapted from Berger et al. 2001).