Loss of Intimacy & Sexual Quality when Diagnosed with Breast Cancer

For women who suffer from breast cancer, there are many challenges in both physical and emotional health. For many breast cancer survivors, it is the strength of family, especially a spouse, which promotes recovery and remission.

If you have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, it is important to consider the psychological treatment options you, and your spouse, may need beyond the traditional chemotherapy and cancer related treatments. For many couples, the development of breast cancer often results in some degree in the loss of intimacy. For women with breast cancer, there is an increased risk for loss of libido but, more importantly, a loss of sexual quality in the relationship.

With breast cancer, it is not uncommon for a woman to experience a varied degree of emotions in terms of her sexual health. Feeling a loss of sexual attractiveness, loss in sexual function and the decrease in libido, the intimacy within a relationship will often wane through the course of treatment. In an effort to support your marriage, or intimate relationship, it is important to seek psychological services that are designed specifically for your intimacy and sexual quality of life. Unfortunately, many physicians fail to suggest or offer a referral for these services to the breast cancer patient.

In addition to psychotherapy intervention, both as an individual and in couples therapy, you may also require the support of psychotropic medications. Most commonly, women who are experiencing the battle with breast cancer may feel depressed and anxious; both conditions that can further impair sexual performance. In an effort to improve these psychological complications, it is important to ask your physician, or psychiatrist, for the appropriate medication support and work with those antidepressants and antipsychotic that will not further inhibit your libido.