Culture as a Factor in Causal Understanding of Illness : A Study of Cancer Patients

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to examine the explanatory models which Indian women use to understand their life threatening diseases. Tbepaper also examines the linkages between these causal explanations and their psychological recovery. Earlier work has shown that in the Indian cultural setting, hospitalised patients attributed their illness more often to metaphysical beliefs. A sample of 132 adult cervical cancer patients from rural background was divided into three groups according to the stage of treat ment (first week of radiation therapy, last week of radiation therapy, and subsequent check-up) and interviewed. The findings reveal thatpatients more often attributed their illness to metaphysical beliefs: fate, God's will, karma than to other factors. These fac tors, however, showed no clear linkages with psychological recovery, which was nega tively correlated with attributions to family conditions, physical weakness and mental stress. Implications of these findings for providing better care to cancer patients are discussed.