Development of a distress inventory for cancer: preliminary results.

Context: Advances in cancer treatment have led to cure and prolongation of patients' lives; however associated psychosocial problems, including distress, can detrimentally affect patients' compliance with treatment and ultimately, their outcome. Symptom distress has been well addressed in many studies; however, psychological distress has only been quantified by using depression or anxiety scales/checklists or quality of life scales containing a distress sub scale/component or by the use of scales that are not psychological distress-specific.

Aims: The present study is an attempt to construct a psychological distress inventory for specific use with cancer patients.

Settings And Design: The standardisation sample consisted of 63 randomly selected patients with head and neck cancer who had undergone/ were undergoing curative treatment at the Regional Cancer Centre, Trivandrum.

Patients And Methods: The Distress Inventory for Cancer contained 57 positively and negatively toned items. An item analysis was conducted, followed by a factor analysis, thereby identifying the domains influencing distress.

Results: The final questionnaire contained 26 items subdivided into four domains viz. the personal, spiritual, physical, and the family domains, with each domain providing a sub score. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) of the scale was found to be 0.85.

Conclusions: These are the preliminary results of an ongoing study on global distress and tool development process. Reported here is the first step towards development of such tool.