Adjustment to Breast Cancer

This article reports a replication of an earlier study of how women cope with and adjust to breast cancer. Forty-nine women with breast cancer completed self-administered instruments that measured coping, fighting spirit, and psychosocial adjustment to illness. The results indicated that fighting spirit was related reliably to better psychosocial adjustment and that coping by avoidance was related reliably to poorer adjustment. Denial was not related reliably to any of the adjustment measures. Similarly, reliable relationships were not found between either disease status or duration of illness and adjustment to the illness.