Designing the Cognitive Model of Survivors after Mastectomy

It should be noted that considering that the present study seeks to understand the transition from cancer to partial recovery, survivors who have recovered their emotional balance and relative health after mastectomy were selected as the studied group. Based on this, in the current study, the survivor is someone who has completed his active treatments and at least 5 years have passed since his partial recovery. Data saturation was reached by conducting 19 interviews. Lincoln and Goba criteria were used to ensure the validity and strength of the research. For this purpose, the credibility of the research was ensured by using strategies such as researcher's self-review, review by members and experts. In this study, seven explanatory codes have been described with cognitive changes in the phenomenon of survival and transition from illness to recovery among the studied survivors. In this transition, organizing the survivors' cognitive experiences reveals two different cognitive systems including the perception of the stage before and after cancer. Swimming with the experience of the survivors shows that sex, age and class discriminations have been internalized with the family's educational strategies. The reproduction of these discriminations with the rules governing the objective positions as well as cognitive patterns affects the health of people. Based on this, it is suggested that policymakers and researchers pay attention to the solutions to eliminate poverty and discrimination by focusing on recognizing and reconstructing the cognitive pattern of people, the objective context of its formation.