The Relationship of Psychological Time and Attitudes to Disease in Women with Cancer of the Reproductive System

摘要

Despite the high adaptive abilities of the female body, in recent decades, there has been a steady increase in gynecological diseases associated with the impaired reproductive system function. Many critical aspects change when a patient is diagnosed with cancer of the reproductive system. The "black mark" of the diagnosis continues to be a death sentence. Personal fears of incurability, pain, and disabling surgical treatments are at the center of the patient's mental reactions. Our empirical study presented in this paper revealed that all these factors contribute to the formation of a distorted internal picture of the disease in the patient's mind, which can lead to the loss of a person's life-meaning perspective and deformation of psychological time. This article examines certain specifics of the relationship and types of attitude to the disease (according to the Time Experience Scale developed by E. I. Golovakha, A. A. Kronik, the TOBOL methods developed by A. E. Lichko and N. Ya. Ivanov, and the Time Perspective Questionnaire by F. Zimbardo) in women with cancer of the reproductive system, who are subjected to outpatient and surgical treatment.