The psychological impact of breast cancer

Abstract

This study aims to promote the knowledge of the psychological impact of breast cancer through a medical literature review. The medical literature usually evaluates the psychological changes in women with breast cancer using questionnaires and/or quality of life checklists which are applied in post surgery patients. These researches are ambiguous in their conclusions, mentioning, sometimes, that breast conservation surgeries have less psychological impact caused by the alterations in body image and others that there are not significant differences between the two groups, that is, radical and conservative surgeries. However, these studies do not estimate the psychological impact of breast cancer since it is uncovered (by the self-examination and the posterior diagnosis), which would be very useful, because the patients undergo throughout all this process, important mourning periods. Through the knowledge and comprehension of the psychological process that women with breast cancer are subjected to during all the phases of treatment, it is possible to understand her psychological dynamic: their fears, distress and fantasies which would interfere with a better response to the treatment. It was concluded that the action of a multidisciplinary health care team, compounded by psychologists and physicians, working together, is important to offer to women with breast cancer a thorough and humanitarian treatment. This can promote health restoration as a whole, whit the patient seen as an indivisible biopsychosocial being, who has a relation with their environment and demand to be in harmony with themselves (a reintegration of the psychological and the biological).