IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v52y2001i9p1433-1440.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A family history of breast cancer: women's experiences from a theoretical perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Rees, G.
  • Fry, A.
  • Cull, A.

Abstract

Individuals at increased risk of developing breast cancer due to their family history of the disease face a number of uncertainties. Personal cancer risk estimates are imprecise and current methods for early detection or prevention are not 100% effective. It is therefore not surprising that adverse psychosocial outcomes have been described within this population. Research attempting to predict the incidence of distress and dysfunction in individuals at increased risk of cancer has been largely a-theoretical and has overlooked a number of potentially important predictive variables. In particular, the influence of personal experience of cancer through involvement with affected relatives has been neglected. There are strong theoretical grounds for hypothesising that dimensions of personal experience may influence response to cancer risk. This paper discusses the potential impact of personal experience on risk perception, illness representations and decision-making. Systematic research in this area may improve predictions of outcome of cancer genetic counselling and inform the clinical process.

Suggested Citation

  • Rees, G. & Fry, A. & Cull, A., 2001. "A family history of breast cancer: women's experiences from a theoretical perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 52(9), pages 1433-1440, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:9:p:1433-1440
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00248-3
    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. Scott, S. & Prior, L. & Wood, F. & Gray, J., 2005. "Repositioning the patient: the implications of being 'at risk'," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 1869-1879, April.

    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:52:y:2001:i:9:p:1433-1440. 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.