Advanced Prostate Cancer Patients’ Ways of Coping with the Hormonal Therapy’s Effect on Body, Sexuality, and Spousal Ties

Abstract

The authors examine the coping strategies employed by advanced prostate cancer patients receiving hormonal therapy to learn from their experience about potential solutions to their nonmedical needs. The study was based on in-depth interviews with 15 such patients and data analysis by the constant comparative method. The main psychosocial difficulties detected were patients’ bodily feminization, sexual dysfunction, and disruption of spousal intimacy. Participants contended with these difficulties through disguise, diversion, and avoidance strategies applied in social interactions, and through self-redefining, self-distancing, and self-solacing cognitive tactics. The analysis of these coping techniques clarifies the motives behind their adoption by the participants, their changing patterns over time, their advantages and disadvantages, and the potential that understanding these issues possesses for improving interventions aimed at alleviating patients’ difficulties.