Association between personality traits and self-care behaviors in patients with gastrointestinal cancer undergoing outpatient chemotherapy

Abstract

Purpose Practicing self-care behaviors is important for patients with gastrointestinal cancer undergoing outpatient chemotherapy. Knowledge of personality traits may be useful in providing individualized support that can improve self-care behaviors. Therefore, we assessed the association between personality traits and self-care behaviors in these patients. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted among patients who received intravenous chemotherapy at a designated regional cancer hospital between June 2020 and October 2020. A self-administered survey was conducted among these patients using the Japanese version of the Ten Item Personality Inventory and a 29-item questionnaire to assess self-care behaviors. Association between the scores of the personality traits and frequency of each self-care behavior was analyzed using the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. Results In total, 53 responses were obtained from 57 participants, of which 52 valid responses were included in the analysis. Openness and conscientiousness were personality traits significantly associated with multiple self-care behaviors. High degree of openness, characterized by the ability to tackle new situations, had a moderately significant positive correlation with adjustment of exercise (ρ = 0.49, p<0.01) and activities for a change of mood (ρ = 0.40, p<0.01). High degree of conscientiousness, characterized by the ability to take a health action, had a significant positive correlation with acquisition of information on disease and treatment (ρ = 0.30, p=0.03) and confirmation of inspection results (ρ = 0.39, p<0.01). Conclusion Openness and conscientiousness are associated with self-care behaviors in patients with gastrointestinal cancer undergoing outpatient chemotherapy and may be useful in explaining and predicting individual self-care behaviors.

Association of Personality Traits and Self-Care Behaviors in People With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Openness is partly related to self-care in T2DM [ 12 ] and specifically linked to high compliance with foot care and general self-care behaviors, but it yielded non-significant associations with glycemic control, diet, medication adherence, and physical activity. The inconsistent associations between openness and objective markers of glycemia or glycemic control are supported by previous work [ 29 , 75 ] but not for physical activity compliance [ 76 ]. This finding is very interesting as openness is a personality factor that is particularly related to adaptive coping [ 77 ] by reducing many of the negative short-term physical effects of environmental stressors.…”

“…It has been suggested that conscientiousness is a dutiful, achievement-oriented, orderly, and accepting of the rules trait [ 80 ], and therefore, people having this trait may show greater compliance with self-care activities and risk of diabetes [ 75 , 81 , 82 ]. Many other individual studies of people with chronic conditions other than diabetes consistently also found positive health benefits of being highly conscientious [ 76 , 83 - 85 ]. The observed results are also consistent with the conclusions of a systematic review that included 17 studies of adults with type 2 diabetes and found weak to moderate associations between weight management and personality traits such as neuroticism and conscientiousness [ 73 ].…”