4. Discussion
anxiety, breast cancer, psychological distress, depressed, cancer worry, depression
BREAST CANCER
In this study, we identified high rates of anxiety, with over half of newly found cancer-unaffected The present study addresses a gap in the literature by investigating coping self-efficacy and its relationship with psychological and decision-related outcomes after genetic test result disclosure in cancer-unaffected female For depression, a similar pattern of results emerged, with lower coping self-efficacy being associated with a higher likelihood of clinical or borderline clinical depression. Participants with high confidence to receive social support from family and friends post genetic test result felt significantly less depressed. This pattern has similarly been reported in the literature; breast cancer patients with higher coping self-efficacy generally experience less psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, distress, and cancer worry [While coping self-efficacy seemed to have a strong negative relationship to psychological burden after genetic test result disclosure, it did not appear to have any impact on the current certainty in the decision-making process. Decisional conflict was present for a majority of the sample, but contrary to the hypotheses, higher coping self-efficacy was not associated with less decisional conflict, nor was it associated with being further along the decision-making process. Interestingly, decisional conflict was by and large not related to any of the psychological parameters. Psychological distress has previously been found to be a predictor of decisional conflict in longitudinal studies [Further limitations of this study need to be addressed. Participants were recruited after receiving their genetic test result. This could have led to biased sampling because women with seemingly higher psychological distress might not have been asked to participate in the study, as well as self-selection because distraught women might not have been willing to participate. Additionally, it has previously been reported that those with higher self-efficacy are more likely to undergo genetic testing for Despite these limitations, several clinical implications may be deducted from our results. The high rates of clinical anxiety support the notion for low-threshold psycho-oncological support, which should routinely be offered to newly diagnosed 