Purpose The study investigated relationships among the extent of disease, religious coping, and death depression in Iranian
patients with cancer.
Method A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with a convenience sample of 482 Iranian cancer patients.
Participants completed demographic and health, death depression, and religious coping surveys.
Results After controlling for demographic and health characteristics, positive and negative religious coping behaviors were
significantly related to the experience of death depression. There was an interaction effect between negative religious coping
and extent of disease with significant positive relationships to the experience of death depression.
Conclusions Negative religious coping was found to be more closely associated with death depression in patients with earlier
stage disease than those with advanced stages of cancer in this sample of patients with cancer from Iran. Findings support
assessing patients for use of religious coping strategies. Muslim patients who are religiously alienated and have existential
anguish may be vulnerable and need heightened support following diagnosis and during treatment of early stage cancer.
کلید واژگان :
Keywords Cancer . Culture . Death depression . Religious coping . Muslim
