A qualitative study of decision-making by breast cancer patients about telling their children about their illness

Many breast cancer patients are troubled about telling their school-age children about their illness. However, little attention has been paid to the factors that encourage or discourage them from revealing the illness. This study explored decision-making by breast cancer patients about telling their children about their illness.

Participants were 30 breast cancer patients recruited from a regional cancer institution in Japan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and content analysis was performed.

Six preparatory stages of decision-making by Japanese breast cancer patients about telling their children about their illness were identified as follows: contemplation, preparation, action-hospitalization and surgery, action-adjuvant therapy, action-diagnosis, and action-prognosis. We also identified 11 categories of positive aspects and ten categories of negative aspects about revealing their illness to children. The categories of negative aspects with higher frequency were similar to those found by previous research, but categories of positive aspects were unique. The rate of reference to negative aspects in total reduces gradually as the preparatory stage advances, and in action-diagnosis and action-prognosis stages the balance between positive and negative aspects becomes about half and half.

Patients, especially in action-hospitalization and surgery, can be expected to tell their children about their illness although they find negative aspects much more compelling than positive aspects and experience great distress. These patients have special needs for support from others.