![Sample our Behavioral Sciences journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110801/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Behavioral-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
What information should be given to cancer patients has been a controversial matter throughout the history of medicine. Legal, social, personal, and even situational factors have conditioned the approach used to inform patients in different countries over the years. The type of information patients should receive and in what manner it is delivered has been investigated empirically only in recent years. The present study evaluated the effects of the following factors on patients' psychosocial adjustment: (1) the congruence of the information provided to patients and family members, and (2) the completeness and systematic, sequential provision of the information. The authors postulated that the information would have different short- and long-term effects of psychosocial adjustment. Seventy-one breast cancer patients were divided into three groups according to the amount and type of information provided. The congruence and type of information proved to have an important influence on the patients' psychosocial adjustment, as mediated by a number of vaiables related to how information was given (systematically and sequentially) and how the effects of the information were evaluated (short- versus long-term effects and personal versus interpersonal effects).