Relationship between resilience and life satisfaction in a sample of breast cancer women

The Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM, 2017) indicates that breast cancer is the most frequent neoplasia in Spanish women. In the last decades, there has been an increased number of studies from a salutogenic perspective. Thus, resilience, a construct framed within the positive psychology field, has been defined as the ability to resist and overcome traumatic situations, (Águila, 2000). According to the literature, there is a positive relationship between resilience and psychological well-being, in breast cancer women (Guil et al., 2016). Therefore, life satisfaction is expected to relate to resilience, since it is a broader concept with greater stability than psychological wellbeing. Therefore, the aim of the study is to analyze the relationship between resilience, including all its dimensions, and life satisfaction, as well as to examine the predictive ability that one has over another. The sample consisted of 30 breast cancer women, with a mean age of 47.47 years (SD = 6,356) attended at the Hospital of Jerez at the time of the evaluation. The Wagnild and Young Resilience Scale (1993) and the Life Satisfaction Scale of Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin were administered. The results show statistically significant positive correlations between resilience, specifically the dimensions “Equanimity”, “Confidence in itself”, “Perseverance”, and Life Satisfaction. In regression analyzes, resilience has not shown significant predictive ability in Life Satisfaction. Despite the positive relationship between both variables, we cannot conclude that resilience is a predictor of life satisfaction in within this sample.