Prostate cancer: Patients' and spouses' coping and marital adjustment

Abstract

This qualitative study assessed the coping and marital adjustment of 12 prostate cancer patients and their spouses. Whilst drawing upon the transactional model of coping, differentiation was made between individual and interpersonal coping. Relative to their spouses, patients employed a wider range of individual strategies, and used them more frequently. With regard to interpersonal coping, spouses were more actively engaged in meeting the demands of the illness than were patients, whereas patients employed more protective buffering than partners by avoiding discussions about their cancer or by denying their anxieties and concerns regarding it. The majority of patients reported that their marital relationships had remained the same or had improved since their diagnoses, although a few men reported negative changes. Of those couples who had been sexually active prior to diagnosis, all reported negative changes arising from the patients' impotence brought about by their treatment for prostate cancer.