A RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE OF WOMEN COPING WITH CANCER - A PRELIMINARY-STUDY

To understand fully how a woman copes with cancer, researchers must ex amine the relational context in which a woman lives, copes, and meets the demands of a life-threatening illness, This paper presents prelimi nary findings of a study involving thirty-four mothers who have cancer . Survey methods involving a questionnaire were used to look at the re lationship of the factors of mutuality, silencing the self schemas, an d relationship-focused coping to the psychosocial adaptation to cancer , The findings indicated a significant correlation between silencing t he self schemas and health care behaviors. Correlations between mutual ity and quality of life approached statistical significance, Based on these findings, suggestions for social work practice with cancer patie nts and their families are made.