Social barriers to emotional expression and their relations to distress in male and female cancer patients.

Objective: Emotional expression is an important means of coping with stressful experiences such as cancer. Social barriers to expression may have adverse effects. Research has suggested that men are less likely to express their emotions and have different patterns of social support compared to women. We examined whether male cancer patients have a lower tendency to express emotions, are less likely to perceive social barriers to expression, and are differentially affected by social barriers from different support sources as compared to women.

Design: Questionnaires were administered to 41 women and 41 men using a cross-sectional study design.

Method: Patients diagnosed with gynaecological or prostate cancer within the past 5 years completed questionnaires on moods, intrusive thoughts, social constraints and emotional expressivity.

Results: There was a trend towards greater emotional expressivity in women as compared to men, but no significant gender differences in perceptions of social constraints from spouse/partner or others. Multiple regression analyses revealed that men experienced significantly greater distress in association with social constraints from their spouse/partner than did women.

Conclusion: Men may be more vulnerable to social barriers to expression than previously assumed. Gender differences in emotional expressivity may be less important than the social context in which expression takes place.