IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v28y1989i1p19-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of breast cancer and mastectomy on emotional support and adjustment

Author

Listed:
  • Zemore, Robert
  • Shepel, Lawrence F.

Abstract

Wortman and Dunkel-Schetter [1] (J. Soc. Issues 35, 120-155, 1979) have argued that victims of misfortune are likely to experience reduced social support at a time when support is needed most. The resulting self-doubt and isolation are thought to increase the victims' distress. Hypotheses derived from their analysis were tested by administering social and emotional adjustment inventories to 301 women who had undergone a mastectomy as treatment for breast cancer, and to 100 women diagnosed as having benign breast lumps (no-cancer, no-mastectomy controls). As expected, perceived emotional support was positively correlated with adjustment. However, contrary to Wortman and Dunkel-Schetter's analysis, the cancer patients perceived greater emotional support from friends and family than did the controls. In addition, these cancer 'victims' were no more socially or emotionally maladjusted than women without cancer.

Suggested Citation

  • Zemore, Robert & Shepel, Lawrence F., 1989. "Effects of breast cancer and mastectomy on emotional support and adjustment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 19-27, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:28:y:1989:i:1:p:19-27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(89)90302-X
    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. Mary T. O'Brien, 1993. "Multiple Sclerosis," Clinical Nursing Research, , vol. 2(1), pages 67-85, February.

    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:28:y:1989:i:1:p:19-27. 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.