IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v19y1984i8p831-837.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The relationship of two dimensions of social support to the psychological well-being and social functioning of women with advanced breast cancer

Author

Listed:
  • Bloom, Joan R.
  • Spiegel, David

Abstract

Of interest to the field is the mechanism through which social support acts as a resistance resource for individuals undergoing stressful life circumstances. Women with advanced breast cancer (N = 86) were interviewed to determine how their outlook on life and social functioning were affected by the social support they received. Emotional support provided by the family was predicted to affect the woman's sense of well-being whereas the opportunities for social exchange provided by one's social activities were expected to effect the woman's social functioning. Consistent with the predictions, the data indicate that social support is multidimensional. Emotional support was strongly related to one's outlook. However, one's opportunities for social exchange affect not only one's social functioning, but also one's outlook on life, suggesting an interactive process whereby family support improves outlook, both outlook and opportunities for social exchange are related to one's sense of social functioning. These data explain the erosion of social support during life-threatening illness such as cancer as a result of the limitations imposed by the illness on one's opportunities for social exchange.

Suggested Citation

  • Bloom, Joan R. & Spiegel, David, 1984. "The relationship of two dimensions of social support to the psychological well-being and social functioning of women with advanced breast cancer," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 831-837, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:19:y:1984:i:8:p:831-837
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(84)90400-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ami Rokach, 2007. "Coping with loneliness among the terminally ill," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 82(3), pages 487-503, July.
    2. Birditt, Kira & Antonucci, Toni C., 2008. "Life sustaining irritations? Relationship quality and mortality in the context of chronic illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(8), pages 1291-1299, October.
    3. Grant J McGeechan & Kerri E McPherson & Karen Roberts, 2018. "An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experience of living with colorectal cancer as a chronic illness," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(15-16), pages 3148-3156, August.
    4. Ritesh Banerjee & Ethan Cohen-Cole & Giulio Zanella, 2007. "Demonstration effects in preventive care," Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers QAU07-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:19:y:1984:i:8:p:831-837. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.