Being diagnosed with breast cancer is a significant source of stress for women concerned. For understandable reasons, the cure is no less stressful. But what about breast cancer survivorship? Nowadays, in France, about seventy-five percent of cases of breast cancer go into remission (Institut National du Cancer, 2016). However, even if there are more and more survivors, completing treatment is not enough to ensure women’s physical and emotional long-term well-being.
The goals of our study are to explore the psychological adjustment of women in remission from breast cancer and to investigate the reasons why their ways of adjusting are different. For this purpose, we have evaluated the presence of significant stress and identified the physical, psychological and environmental factors causes it. We have studied the coping strategies used against those factors and determined which types of coping are more associated to a better psychological adjustment.
To collect the required data, we have interrogated ten women. Our material was composed of three questionnaires and a short non-directive research interview. Thus, our participants have completed the Perceived Stress Scale, which measures the current level of stress; the Ways of Coping Checklist – Revised, which explore the problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping or search for social support on women ; and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, used to avoid psychopathological biases.
Results have shown that survivors from breast cancer are mostly well adjusted but report a lot of stress factors. According to the WCC-R, the survival women adopted more problem-focused coping than emotion coping, which is associated with psychological adjustment difficulties. Unfortunately, we were unable to put forward factors explaining why women with similar situations experience different adaptations. It is necessary to keep researching on that topic, so we could have a better understanding of their psychological experience and develop a better survivors’ care.
