Illness Identity and the Self-regulatory Model in Recovery from Early Stage Gynaecological Cancer

Women in recovery from early stage gynaecological cancer have extremely good survival and low recurrence rates. Despite this, women continue to feel vulnerable to cancer recurrence for years after treatment. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to explore the factors involved in recovery from gy...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of health psychology 2001-09, Vol.6 (5), p.511-521
Main Authors: Bradley, E. J., Calvert, E., Pitts, M. K., Redman, C. W. E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Female genital diseases
Gynaecological cancer
Gynecology. Andrology. Obstetrics
Identity
Medical sciences
Recovery
Selfregulation models
Sickness
Tumors
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Women in recovery from early stage gynaecological cancer have extremely good survival and low recurrence rates. Despite this, women continue to feel vulnerable to cancer recurrence for years after treatment. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to explore the factors involved in recovery from gynaecological cancer. This article argues that the illness identity of gynaecological cancer perpetuates a vulnerability to cancer recurrence. The absence of self-diagnosis prior to medical diagnosis is important in the formation of gynaecological cancer illness identity. A lack of self-diagnosis may be due to the ‘normalization’ of initial symptomatology. It is suggested that illness identity is responsible for maintaining fears of symptom-free cancer recurrence. The self-regulatory model is employed to explore this process, looking in particular at the reinforcement of reassurance needs.
ISSN:1359-1053
1461-7277
DOI:10.1177/135910530100600505