Emotional Suppression Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Ovarian Cancer Patients - Latent Profile Analysis.

Background: This quantitative study aimed to analyze the potential categories of emotional suppression characteristics and explore the influencing factors of different categories among ovarian cancer chemotherapy patients in Western Region of China.

Methods: From September 2024 to March 2025, a convenience sampling method was used to administer a questionnaire to ovarian cancer chemotherapy patients at a gynecology center within a university hospital situated in the Northwest region of China. The investigation employed general information questionnaires, the Emotional Inhibition Scale (EIS), Social Constraint Scales (SCS), Family APGAR Index (APGAR), and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted to identify the profiles of emotional suppression levels in patients with ovarian cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Multinomial logistic regression was used to investigate the correlations among these profiles in ovarian cancer chemotherapy patients.

Results: A total of 228 ovarian cancer chemotherapy patients participated, yielding an average score of 26.76 ± 5.71 on the emotional suppression. The LPA identified three emotion suppression profiles: high level emotional inhibition-low verbal inhibition (Profile 1,13.0%), high level emotional inhibition-high verbal inhibition (Profile 2,46.1%) and low level emotional inhibition-medium verbal inhibition (Profile 3,40.8%); Multiple Logistic regression analysis revealed that educational attainment (high/low), anxiety symptoms, severe family dysfunction, disease recurrence (yes), marital status (divorced/widowed), and social constraint were significant contributing factors.

Conclusion: Our research findings reveal significant heterogeneity in emotional suppression among ovarian cancer patients, which provides valuable information for tailoring intervention measures to meet individual needs, especially for patients in the high-level emotional inhibition group. To enhance patients' emotional management capabilities and alleviate their levels of emotional inhibition, healthcare practitioners should fully consider how the emotional regulation subgroup is influenced by factors such as disease recurrence, educational background, marital status, anxiety levels, family support and patients' perceived social constraints in the medical environment.