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Не знать, но бояться: источники и способы преодоления канцерофобии
Over the last hundred years mankind has learned how to treat or prevent many infectious diseases, but as a natural result of medical progress and increased life expectancy, cancer has come to the fore as one of the main causes of death. Cancer, due to its specific nature and treatment, can cause fear, which in its extreme form manifests itself as carcinophobia. Undoubtedly, cancer has pronounced physiological reasons for fear, but the way this fear is embodied and levelled has much to do with cultural and socio-economic features of the environment. This study, based on an analysis of 37 in-depth interviews, attempts to answer the question of what frightens people who have not personally experienced cancer, about cancer, and how such fear is overcome in everyday life. The analysis of the informants' narratives allows us to suggest that the fear of cancer is inextricably linked to the perceptions of the state of the healthcare system and the level of socio-economic development of the country. The low level of trust in the institution of medicine in this case can be replaced by faith in an individual specialist, acquaintance with whom will be a potential "salvation" from cancer. The high degree of uncertainty associated with both the peculiarities of the disease itself and the socio-cultural context in which it can potentially be lived in, is overcome in several ways. One of them is the formulation of lay theories about the causes, prevention and treatment of cancer, which allow the reduction of the complex disease to specific, controllable factors. Psychosomatic lay theories are especially pronounced: "thoughts about cancer", "dissatisfaction with life", "stress" - one of the key causes of cancer, according to the respondents. An important role in overcoming the fear of cancer is played by increased agency of individuals in the field of self-care. Thus, anti-cancer practices that people bring into their everyday lives can reduce the irrational fear of the disease. The opposite strategy becomes a fatalistic stance toward the disease, as well as a narrow planning horizon - cancer is not perceived as a phenomenon that lies within the field of current problems, and loses out to more pressing social and economic challenges.