Social Support and Adjustment Among Wives of Men with Prostate Cancer

Abstract

This study aims to understand how wives’ mental health and life enjoyment are affected by their perceptions of the sufficiency of the support they render to their husbands who have prostate cancer. Its specific purpose is to determine whether these outcomes accrue more strongly to wives who perceive their husbands coping in avoidant ways. Drawing on data from an interview study of 51 wives of men diagnosed with prostate cancer, the authors employ heiarchical regression analysis to examine the wives’ adjustment in relation to their provision of support to their husbands. Our findings reveal a significant moderating effect of the husbands’ avoidant coping; consistent with cognitive dissonance theory, wives who provided sufficient support to more avoidant husbands demonstrated better mental health and life enjoyment than wives of men who were less avoidant. In addition, the perceived sufficiency of the support provided by the wives’ social networks had a stronger bearing on their adjustment than the support provided by their husbands. These findings add to our understanding of the psychological benefits that support providers derive when they communicate support in ways that suit the recipient's style of managing threat.

KEYWORDS:

• social support
• avoidant coping
• prostate cancer
• mental health

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank the study participants and Dr. Tom Morris for their collaboration.