Coping with mastectomy.

Abstract

Emotional disturbances in mastectomy patients are hypothesized as the consequences of four physical stages which these patients experience, from finding the physical anomaly with its accompanying anxiety, through diagnostic testing with its accompanying anxiety, rage, anguish and despair, to biopsy and mastectomy with accompanying dependency, compliancy and depression. The emotions in each stage are recast as a model of homeostatic response to physical conditions, the emotions permitting the woman to center in on the illness, adjust to its outcome and restructure her life around it. Suggestions are proferred to rehabilitation personnel on methods of handling the emotional responses of women at each of the stages.

Issues in the study of stress and coping in rehabilitation settings.

“…Moreover, patients may deal with stress differently in the acute phase of the event as compared with later stages, particularly as the source of stress lingers, partly because of how the disease is cognitively represented (Morse & Johnson, 1991). Consistent with this idea, Silverman and Restaino (1979) have argued that persons experiencing a mastectomy will go through four stages defined by both objective experiences (detection, testing, biopsy, and mastectomy) and emotional experiences (anxiety, rage, dependency, and depression). Although there may be no normative set of stages people go through when confronting medical challenges (Wortman & Silver, 1989), it is undeniable that a person's experiences and cognitions about those experiences will change over time.…”