Influencia de la educación sexual en la vulnerabilidad de un grupo de mujeres con cáncer cervicouterino

Abstract

This article refers to fifteen women with cervical cancer that provided a narrative of their experience through a biographic process in which the sexual education they were formally and informally given was explored. Considering the sexuality discourses that interact and coexist in the mexican society and that cervical cancer is a disease with risk factors co-related to sexual life, a clinical ethnography study was designed in order to identify the kinds and levels of sexual education of the participants. Fifteen women, ages 37 to 48 years old, diagnosed with cervical cancer in monitoring stage were included in the study. For data collection, an in-depth semistructured interview was conducted and the information was analyzed. The sexual education the participants were given was informal and it consisted of family discourse and models in which sexuality and everything related to it was expressed as threatening and dangerous wich led to feelings of guilt, shame and fear. The physical and emotional distance as well as the silence from important models turned into unfavorable scenarios for the development of appreciation feelings, for themselves, for their desires and needs; without enough confidence and inner strenght to make decisions and to build autonomy.