Images of God in Relation to Coping Strategies of Palliative Cancer Patients

ContextReligious coping is important for end-of-life treatment preferences, advance care planning, adjustment to stress, and quality of life. The currently available religious coping instruments draw on a religious and spiritual background that presupposes a very specific image of God, namely God as someone who personally interacts with people. However, according to empirical research, people may have various images of God that may or may not exist simultaneously. It is unknown whether one's belief in a specific image of God is related to the way one copes with a life-threatening disease.ObjectivesTo examine the relation between adherence to a personal, a nonpersonal, and/or an unknowable image of God and coping strategies in a group of Dutch palliative cancer patients who were no longer receiving antitumor treatments.MethodsIn total, 68 palliative care patients completed and returned the questionnaires on Images of God and the COPE-Easy.ResultsIn the regression analysis, a nonpersonal image of God was a significant positive predictor for the coping strategies seeking advice and information (β = 0.339, P < 0.01), seeking moral support (β = 0.262, P < 0.05), and denial (β = 0.26, P < 0.05), and a negative predictor for the coping strategy humor (β = −0.483, P < 0.01). A personal image of God was a significant positive predictor for the coping strategy turning to religion (β = 0.608, P < 0.01). Age was the most important sociodemographic predictor for coping and had negative predictive value for seeking advice and information (β = −0.268, P < 0.05) and seeking moral support (β = −0.247, P < 0.05).ConclusionA nonpersonal image of God is a more relevant predictor for different coping strategies in Dutch palliative cancer patients than a personal or an unknowable image of God.