Yaru Wu,1 Yuting Zhang,1 Jing Yuan,1 Juan Yang,1 Ling Chen,2,3 Wei Zhu,2,3 Chunyan Xu2,3 

1School of Nursing, Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Gynecological Surgery, Affiliated Tumor Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China; 3Health Care Research Center for Xinjiang Regional population, Urumqi, Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Chunyan Xu, Email xcy101413@163.com

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.

Keywords: ovarian cancer, chemotherapy, emotional inhibition, social constraints, Latent profile analysis