Creencias De Enfermedad En Cáncer

Int.J. Behav. Med. DOI 10.1007/s12529-010-9141-6

Illness Beliefs About Cancer Among Healthy Adults Who have and have not Lived with Cancer Patients
Antonio Del Castillo & Débora Godoy-Izquierdo & Ma Luisa Vázquez & Juan F. Godoy

# International Society of Behavioral Medicine 2011

Abstract Background Illness representations have been proposed as key determinants for facing health risksand managing disease, and consequently for health outcomes. Purpose This study aims to know and compare nonspecialised illness representations of cancer among adults who had not suffered from cancer and who had/had not lived with cancer patients. Method The revised Illness Perception Questionnaire was adapted to assess illness perceptions among healthy people. Cancer representations were exploredin a communitybased sample of adults of both genders from different educational backgrounds and who had differing experience with cancer, none being a patient. Results The participants’ beliefs about cancer included both biomedical and folk knowledge. Compared to age, sex, and educational level, family experience with cancer (having lived or not with a patient) had the strongest impact on thecontents of the representations on cancer. Further, people
A. Del Castillo : D. Godoy-Izquierdo : M. L. Vázquez : J. F. Godoy Grupo de investigación Medicina Conductual/Psicología de la Salud (CTS-267), Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain D. Godoy-Izquierdo : J. F. Godoy Depto. Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain D.Godoy-Izquierdo (*) Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Cartuja. 18071, Granada, Spain e-mail: deborag@ugr.es

with a family experience with the disease, compared to those not having a relative diagnosed with cancer, reported significantly more symptoms and stronger emotional impact. Conclusions This studyallowed us to establish the perceptions on cancer of non-patients with no specialised knowledge. Findings may help in designing and implementing tailored preventive interventions taking into account family experience with the disease, as well as interventions aimed at enhancing family and social care and support given to cancer patients. Keywords Illness representations . IPQ-R . Psycho-oncology .Non-patients . Prevention . Social support

Introduction The way people perceive health and disease and its relationship with an individual’s health and disease-related behaviours has received increased attention. Understanding these issues is important in designing and implementing effective interventions in health promotion, disease prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, treatment adherencemanagement, patient education, and family counselling. The most empirically supported theoretical model regarding lay cognitions about disease is the Self-Regulation Model of Common Sense Illness Representations [SRM; 1, 2]. It has been applied to differing physical and mental illnesses, both among patients and non-patients (see [3–6] for a review). Figure 1 displays graphically the SRM proposals.Sociodemographic variables such as gender, age, or educational level are not usually found to have significant impact on illness beliefs [7–10], although a number of differences have been reported [11–13]. However, to have suffered from the disease or to have had an ill relative has

Int.J. Behav. Med. Fig. 1 SRM main features and proposals
Self-regulation process Personal knowledge andexperience Internal (e.g. pain) or external (e.g. health message) information is compared to illness beliefs and fitted to them Socio-cultural knowledge Information and experiences from others

Stage 1: Model Creation of a set of illness beliefs

Cognitive and emotional illness representations

Personal meaning and emotional reactions

Stage 2: Action Action planning and implementation...