Relationship between Quality of Life and Depressive Disorder among Women living with Breast Cancer in Nigeria

Background: Quality of Life among women with breast cancer is an important parameter for monitoring disease progression in the early stage of the disease. A low/poor quality of life could increase their venerability to depression because of the stress that results in the course of diagnosis and treatment. This study aimed to assess the quality of life among women living with breast cancer and depressive disorder. Methods: The study was a comparative cross-sectional design conduct among breast cancer patient with depressive disorder. 69 questionnaires were administered to the women test subject, and twice this number to the comparative control group (1:2), making a minimum sample size of 207. The instruments used for this study include; Socio-demographic and clinical variable questionnaire. Patients Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 21. The association between quality of life and depression were analyzed using an independent t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The confidence level for all the tests will be set at 95%. A p-value of less than 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Results: The study observed that 34.3% of total respondents had major depression. From QoL, physical domain scores decreased significantly from no depression (64.7 ± 11.1) to major depression (50.5 ± 9.3), Ï -value = 0.001. Also, social domain scores were significantly higher among women with no depression (58.5 ± 16.0), those with major depression (43.0 ± 11.0), Ï -value = 0.003. These levels were statistically significant. Moreso, the mean score psychological and Environmental domains QoL were lower in the depressive subject compared to the control group however no statistically significant. (P-values 0.053 and 0.803 respectively) Conclusions: The significant predictor for quality of life is the stress from the disease condition. Women with breast cancer who had Major Depressive Disorder had lower mean scores in all QoL domains compared to those without Major Depressive Disorder. Hence, the role of psychological assessment in the management of breast malignancies is hereby advocated to improve the quality of life and treatment outcomes.