Spirituality, Religiosity and Illness: a view from Women with Breast Cancer

The present investigation aims to explore the role of spirituality and religiosity in the way that women with breast cancer assume, signifiy and face their illness. For this, a qualitative analysis of a series of in-depth interviews with a group of four women participating in a "spirituality based intervention" of the Instituto Nacional de Cancerologia, is made. After an exercise of review and theoretical confrontation, an approximation towards the modes of agency and interpretation of the illness was achieved, modes which are crossed concepts and practices related to the "spiritual" and "religious" area as well as the medical knowledge. The ideas of the women about illness and care reveal a combination of these elements. Major emerging categories: spirituality, religiosity and illness.