Illness intrusiveness, self-concept restructuring, and psychosocial adjustment in men with prostate cancer

I investigated the relationships among illness intrusiveness, self-concept restructuring, and psychological adjustment in men recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. Fifty-eight married men (40 to 84 years old) who had recently been diagnosed (within 1 year) with prostate cancer completed assessments of their hoped-for and feared possible selves, the extent to which prostate cancer made achieving/avoiding possible selves more difficult (i.e., intrusion by cancer on possible selves), and the extent to which prostate cancer increased or decreased the importance of possible selves (i.e., self-concept restructuring). These men also completed measures of psychological well-being, anxiety, and depression. More than half of the men reported that prostate cancer increased the difficulty of achieving at least one hope (60.3%) or avoiding at least one fear (56.1%). Illness intrusion on feared selves interacted with restructuring to predict adjustment. Specifically, men who reported intrusions on fears had lower well-being and higher depression only if they did not also report restructuring their feared selves. Intrusion on hopes did not interact with restructuring to predict adjustment. Results suggest that self-concept restructuring may buffer associations between illness intrusion and poor psychological adjustment among men with prostate cancer.