Psychosocial Aspects of Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer: Psychological Guidelines for Genetic Testing

Genetic conditions such as hereditary breast/ovarian cancer (HBOC) evoke strong emotions such as anxiety, depression, anger and guilt for passing the defect to the offspring. Research showed that first degree relatives of breast cancer patients reported impairment in daily functioning and sleep disturbances due to breast cancer worry. The perception of personal genetic susceptibility to HBOC is particularly burdensome. People react with different coping strategies to handle these emotions, such as minimisation of the problem, denial or hypervigilance (emotion-focussed coping). People not only react emotionally, but also cognitively to the threatening genetic condition. They construct a cognitive representation of the health threat (e.g., causes, symptoms and severity of the disease, susceptibility to the disease), based on their current and past experiences with the disease. They also generate possible action plans for managing the threat, such as seeking medical