Medical risk, perceived risk, and body anxiety in women attending a high-risk breast surveillance clinic.
Item
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Title
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Medical risk, perceived risk, and body anxiety in women attending a high-risk breast surveillance clinic.
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Identifier
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AAI9304699
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identifier
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9304699
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Creator
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Manheimer, Joan.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Steven Tuber
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Clinical
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Abstract
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A disease whose cure can be as threatening as its potential consequences, breast cancer is a frightening spectre for many adult women. For women with family histories of the disease, this threat is often exacerbated by their increased medical risk of the disease and their personal experiences with it. Current research has frequently focused on developing a multi-factorial model to assess the degree of increased medical risk faced by these women. However, little work has been done on the psychological consequences of being at increased risk for such a potentially devastating disease.;This study examined the interplay among medical risk, perception of risk and body anxiety in a group of fifty-two women with a varied demographic profile who were enrolled in a surveillance clinic for women with family histories of breast cancer. The women fell into two distinct categories of increased medical risk for the disease and described a normal curve on a Likert scale measuring their perceptions of their risk of the disease. All subjects were given Secord's Word Homonym Test as a measure of body anxiety. They were also given Rorschachs, which were scored using Fisher and Cleveland's Barrier and Penetration Scales as additional measures of body anxiety.;The study discovered strong relationships between a woman's perception of her risk of getting breast cancer and her anxiety about her body as measured by Secord's test: the more extreme her assessments of personal risk--in the direction either of certainty or denial--the more body anxiety was measured. In addition, the younger the woman at the time her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, the more severe her body anxiety.;Fisher and Cleveland's scales, however, produced no significant data. The failure of these measures to achieve significant results may suggest that someone at risk for disease locates body anxiety differently than someone who actually suffers from a disease. Distinctions in medical risk, similarly, bore no significant relationship to measures of body anxiety, suggesting the extent to which anxiety about the disease is a subjective phenomena.;The study's results point to the importance of identifying and counseling those women whose anxiety about the disease is sufficiently severe that it is difficult for them to use information about prevention or treatment wisely. The study also suggests the extent of the impact of a mother's breast cancer on her daughter's life and therefore the advisability of offering counseling for young daughters of breast cancer patients.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
