Marital Satisfaction and Emotional Adjustment After Breast Cancer

Abstract

The Profile of Mood States was used to measure distress in 44 patients with breast cancer at 15 and 34 months after the diagnosis. Marital satisfaction, measured by the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, was found to predict change in patients' distress over time. Patients who reported that their marriage was unsatisfactory, regardless of their report of distress 15 months after the diagnosis, were at greater risk for elevated distress in the future than were those who were satisfied with their marriage. The findings suggest that marital satisfaction could be used as an indicator of a patient's trajectory of distress over time.

Key Words:

• Breast cancer
• emotional adjustment
• marital satisfaction
• social support