Background: Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women, and it is the second cause of death after lung cancer. Although the number of recovered patients has increased, the side effects of the treatment still affect them. This study investigated the mediating role of mental distress in the relationship between self-compassion and cognitive flexibility and quality of life.
Methods:  The descriptive method used correlation and structural equations. The population consisted of women referred to Iranmehr Hospital in Birjand between 1395 and March 1401, diagnosed with breast cancer. Out of these, 202 participants were selected through convenience sampling. These patients were administered quality of life questionnaires, the psychological impact of the cancer scale for measuring mental distress, the cognitive flexibility questionnaire, and the self-compassion questionnaire. SPSS, Lisrel software Pearson correlation methods, and structural equation modeling analysis were used.
Results: The results indicated that all goodness-of-fit indices for the model fell within an acceptable range, and the hypothesized model of this study was a good fit for the sample under investigation. Given that the significance level for the Sobel test was considered to be less than 0.05. Thus, self-compassion had a significant positive effect on the quality of life through mental distress (β=0.52, p_value <0.05), but cognitive flexibility did not have a significant positive effect on the quality of life through mental distress (β=0.14, p_value >0.05).
Conclusion: The findings support the mediating role of mental distress in the relationship between self-compassion with Quality of Life, so therapeutic interventions based on self-compassion can be useful in improving the quality of life in women recovered from breast cancer.