Adjustment of married couples and unmarried women to gynaecological cancer

This two-part study, conducted at the Department of Oncology, Linn Clinic, Haifa, Israel, compared the psychological and psychosocial adjustment to illness of 44 gynaecological cancer patients to that of their spouses, and the adjustment to illness of these 44 married patients compared to 18 unmarried gynaecological cancer patients. In the first part of the study, differences in psychological distress between marriage partners, measured by Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), were found, the distress of the husband being more severe than that of the wife. In the second part of the study, the psychological distress of unmarried women was found to be more severe than that of married women.