COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesThe biopsychosocial impact of surgical reconstruction andsocial support on breast cancer operated womanby Stefano Tartaglia 1 & Omar Fassio 1Breast cancer is responsible of about 16% of mortality for tumor in women and it is the third commonest cause ofdeath in females in all of the European Union countries: the leading cause of death in females under 65 years.Considering these data, mastectomy is the most frequently used treatment for breast cancer, and it is effectivealthough invasive and could have an important impact on psychological wellbeing (Burke & Kissane, 1998). Inorder to lower negative psychological effects related to mastectomy, more attention has been turned to patients:first the real necessity of mastectomy has been investigated in favour of breast conservation (Moyer, 1997), thenpatients have been actively involved in the decision of a future (Ananian, et al., 2004) rather than prompt breastreconstruction (Elder, et al., 2005). In the last years breast reconstruction have been associated to psychologicaland social support to patients (Roth, et al., 2005).Community and health psychology maintain the importance of social support to cope with traumatic events likeserious illness (Coughlin, 2008). Considering this point researches agree that factors involved in wellbeingpromotion are family support (Kudel, et al., 2008), personal aspects such as self-efficacy, coping strategies,resilience, every day experience subjective quality of life (Folkman & Greer, 2000), social support, and communityintegration (Clayton et al., 2005) and relation aspects in the interaction with physicians and health operators(Arora, 2003).ObjectivesPresent study aimed to compare the effects of breast reconstruction and perceived social support onpsychological wellbeing of women that underwent a surgical intervention to remove breast cancer. Weoperationalized wellbeing in terms of Depression and Satisfaction with life. We decided to make this comparisonin two different time period after the cancer removal, the short and long-term, that means in a high life risk periodand when the emergency due to serious illness decreases.We hypothesized that:both breast reconstruction and perceived social support exercise a negative effect on Depression in short andlong term;both breast reconstruction and perceived social support exercise a positive effect on Satisfaction with life in shortand long term;1University of Turin, Department of Psychology345