Spirituality and mental adjustment have been widely adopted as coping strategies among women with breast cancer. Little information was available locally on the use of spirituality and mental adjustment as coping mechanisms to fight breast cancer. A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess spirituality and mental adjustment as coping strategies and its association with socio demographic data on 216 women with breast cancer. The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-Being (FACIT-Sp) and Mental Adjustment to Cancer (MAC) Scales were used to assess spirituality and mental adjustment. Negative correlation between spiritual well-being and helplessness/hopelessness (r=-0.690; p=0.000), anxious preoccupation (r=-0.277; p=0.000) and avoidance (r=-0.235; p=0.000) and positive correlation between spiritual well-being and fighting spirit (r=0.668; p=0.000) were identified. Socio-demographic factors such as race (p=0.000), religion (p=0.000), academic qualification (p=0.004) and type of surgery (p=0.016) revealed significant relationship with spiritual well-being. Fighting spirit, hopelessness/helplessness and anxious preoccupation also yielded significant relationship with race (p
The Use of Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a common phenomenon among women with breast cancer in Malaysia. This study examines the prevalence, types, influencing factors and source of information regarding CAM among women with breast cancer, using a cross sectional research design. A purposive sampling was used to recruit 103 women with breast cancer who were attending follow up care at the Radiotherapy and Oncology unit of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre. Data was gathered through the use of self–administered questionnaires. Ninety one women identified themselves as CAM users while twelve were non users. Among the CAM users, 57(62.6%) were Malays, 27(29.7%) Chinese and 7(7.7%) Indians. The common types of CAM used were vitamins, nutritional supplements and traditional medicines (TM). CAM was used more frequently upon diagnosis (63.7%) and after completion of conventional treatment (97.8%). With regard to decision-making, most of the women (62.6%) did not make the decision to use CAM and were mostly influenced by their husband and mother (67%). Mother (71.4%), husband (67%), and relatives (56%) were the main sources of information and all values showed significant association with CAM use (p