Perceived stress, anxiety and self-reported health among breast cancer survivors who practice yoga

Marianne Velma Weitz

doi:10.17918/00000989

Living with breast cancer impacts many and presents a growing public health burden. In 2019, there were 268,200 new cases of female breast cancer. While the incidence of breast cancer rises, newer treatment strategies and earlier diagnosis have led to a five-year survival rate of 89.9%. Despite these advances, the diagnosis of breast cancer represents a psychological burden of continuing stress. This psychological burden on an increasingly larger population of women has led to the investigation of interventions which can decrease stress and improve quality of life. The purpose of this research is to investigate if yoga decreases perceived stress and anxiety; thereby, increasing perceived health among breast cancer survivors. An anonymous online survey was sent to members of online breast cancer support groups using links to REDCap, a secure online web application. The survey examined the amount of participation in yoga, yoga dosage, and its relationship to perceived stress, anxiety, and self-reported health. Stress was measured using the Perceived Stress Scale, anxiety was measured using the State Trait Anxiety Scale. The results of this survey of 35 breast cancer survivors indicated that the amount of their yoga participation was high with an average of 948 cumulative life-time hours. Categorizing yoga dosage results was an interesting research challenge since the range was so large. A systematic approach was used. Participants were divided into high and low yoga dosage groups based on how the data were distributed within the sample. The dosage for the number of hours that was over the 25th percentile was categorized as the cutoff for high yoga participation (> 240 hours) compared to the low dosage (< 239 hours). Using an independent t-test to evaluate the difference in the two yoga dosage groups, there were not significant differences in the two groups reported perceived stress, but there were differences in the groups reported anxiety. Total STAI Anxiety scores and sub-scores of state and trait anxiety were lower among the higher dosage yoga group. These results suggest that higher cumulative lifetime yoga participation promotes health due to its association with less anxiety. Surprisingly, the participants in this study described themselves as having overall good health. Overall, the importance of this study is that it showed that among this sample of breast cancer survivors who all identify as practicing yoga, compared to samples of breast cancer survivors in other studies, had low to moderate levels of perceived stress and anxiety, and reported their health as relatively good.

Perceived stress, anxiety and self-reported health among breast cancer survivors who practice yoga

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Perceived stress, anxiety and self-reported health among breast cancer survivors who practice yoga

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