Adjustment to breast cancer: the contribution of resources and causal attributions regarding the illness

The study examined personal resources (sense of coherence and social support) and attributions concerning the causes of illness, and their relationship to adjustment to breast cancer. The research sample included 60 Israeli women with breast cancer, who responded to questionnaires at two stages of their illness: the stage of initial discovery (after first learning of the illness) and approximately six months later (the stage of mitigation and accommodation). The overall level of adjustment to the illness was moderate. While the patients adjusted relatively well in the family and domestic environments, their adjustment in the dimensions of health care, psychological distress, and sexual relations was relatively low. The most frequent causal attributions were psychological factors and family history of illness. The patients' subjective state of health, sense of coherence, and levels of social support were related to most of the adjustment dimensions examined, although both internal and external causal attributions correlated negatively with adjustment in every dimension.