In Eastern cultures, healthcare providers often engage the family in decision-making, frequently without the patient's explicit consent. Owing to a lack of information, we aimed to explore Kurdish families’ perceptions of cancer diagnosis disclosure.

Five hundred families of patients who attended the sole adult tertiary health facility in the Kurdistan Region were personally invited to this cross-sectional study.

The mean age of the family members was 46.24 (19–87 years). Most of the participants reported that they prefer a patient be told he/she has cancer (63.60%). Their reasons were to help course of treatment (16.67%), to improve the relationship with the family (9.43%), to avoid living an illusion (5.66%), to better organize their life (20.13%), and a combination of these reasons (48.11%). The remaining 36.4% of participants did not agree to disclose the truth to their patients. The reasons of these participants were knowing the truth changes everyday life (3.30%), it helps in the course of treatment of patients (1.65%), because there is no treatment for cancer (5.50%), knowing the truth has negative psychological effects (21.98%), knowing the truth has negative social effects (1.65%), the patients will not be cooperative with treatment (3.85%), information disclosure may not be necessary be desired or helpful for some patients at a specific time (1.10%), and a combination of these reasons (60.99%). They reported that religion and family have roles in accepting the disease (67.2 and 94.2%, respectively).

A considerable percentage of Kurdistan family members had a negative attitude towards diagnosis disclosure.