Estratégias de enfrentamento, resiliência e otimismo em mulheres no pós-tratamento do câncer de mama

Abstract

In the breast cancer post-treatment, understood as the end of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, and surgical intervention, women still deal with diverse stressors which might strongly reverberate in their mental health. Thus, taking into consideration that women adopt coping strategies to manage such stressors, the present study aims at identifying the coping strategies used by patients and their relation with the level of resilience and optimism – aspects which are considered healthy for human development. For this purpose, the current research has both a quantitative and a qualitative approach, and an interview was taken in order to understand the negative and positive repercussions of breast cancer for the contemporary life of women, the Resilience Scale developed by Wagnild and Young, the Ways of Coping Scale (WOCS) and the Revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R) by Scheier, Carver and Bridges, the latter as the scope for optimism evaluation. The sample was made up with 50 women who were in the post-treatment cancer, with the age varying from 32 to 75 (A=54, 53; SD=8,75) and, as a result, it was verified that there was no meaningful association between the coping strategies used with the level of resilence and optimism (p<0,05%). We noticed that the only significant association was between the resilence and optimism variables. Despite the absence of expressive correspondence among the resilience variables, coping strategies and optimism, it is possible to see that most women who participated in the research took advantage of coping strategy focused on the problem (60%), showing a moderate resilience level (58%) and a high level of optimism (60%), aspects which might be connected to a good adjustment. In addition, we observed that in spite of having reported negative consequences related to breast cancer as, for example, pain, loss in the working life, fear of relapse and changes in personal relationships, most women mentioned positive effects that came from the disease such as the development of personal strength, better appreciation of life and improvement in personal relationships. The results of the current study reinforce the importance of research which aims at understanding the moment of breast cancer post-treatment, as well as the studies which try to understand the bond among psychological variables capable of favoring the adjustment of women who have finished the initial treatment for breast cancer.