Coping with Breast Cancer from the Perspectives of Husbands and Wives

Abstract

In a cross-sectional study, 36 breast cancer patients and their husbands provided information about how each recalled coping with stress during a course of radiation therapy. Both spouses also were asked to report on one another's coping efforts and to provide information about their own current psychological adjustment and marital satisfaction. The results indicated that wives engaged in more extensive and varicd coping efforts than their husbands did and that the coping strategies which husbands and wives used were largely independent. Consistent with numerous other studies, self-reported coping related to one's own outcomes. The authors also found significant crossover associations between the coping reports of one spouse and the other spouse's outcomes: husbands' outcomes were somewhat more strongly correlated with their wives' reports of their own coping than vice versa. A similar pattern of findings emerged for the coping data provided by one spouse about the other. These data suggest that to understand more fully the link between cancer and psychosocial adjustment after treatment, researchers should consider the coping of spouses as well as patients.