An investigating the Compatibility of Breast cancer from a Psychological and Social Perspective: a systematic review of literature

Breast cancer is the most common and fatal cancer among women aged 40 to 55 accounting for more than 23% of all cancers in women. The present study was aimed at offering an overview of recent studies on the psychological and social adaptation to breast cancer compiled through a systematic review of the related literature. Scientific databases including google scholar, PubMed, ScienceDirect, SID, Proquest, and Ovid were searched using English keywords of “cancer compatibility”, “adaptation”, “breast cancer” and Persian equivalents of “breast cancer” and “compatibility” covering the interval of 2016 to 2020 and the results were reported qualitatively. After conducting the search and evaluating the papers, the final analysis was performed on 19 articles. These studies reported a relationship between the degree of adaptation and the recovery process in breast cancer patients and investigated the significance of this relationship. These papers highlighted the importance of adaptation in improving the quality of life in breast cancer patients. The findings indicate that factors such as spirituality and religion, effective coping strategies, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, perceived social support, marital status, relationship between husband and wife, history of cancer in the family, pre-existing depression, and self-efficacy have significant relationships with the degree of adaptation to breast cancer in the patients. However, there is a need for prospective analytical studies with control of intervention variables in order to further clarify this relationship.