Healthy Canadian adolescents’ perspectives of cancer using metaphors: a qualitative study

OBJECTIVES: Cancer has been described using metaphors for over 4 decades. However, little is known about healthy adolescents’ perspectives of cancer using metaphors. This paper reports on findings specific to adolescents’ perspectives of cancer using metaphors. The findings emerged from a qualitative ethnographic study that sought to understand Canadian adolescents’ conceptualisation of cancer and cancer prevention. DESIGN: To arrive at a detailed description, data were obtained using individual interviews, focus groups and photovoice. SETTING: 6 high schools from a western Canada province. PARTICIPANTS: 75 Canadian adolescents. RESULTS: Use of 4 metaphors emerged from the data: loss (cancer as the sick patient and cancer as death itself); military (cancer as a battle); living thing (haywire cells and other living things) and faith (cancer as God's will) metaphors, with the loss and military metaphors being the ones most frequently used by adolescents. Adolescents’ descriptions of cancer were partly informed by their experiences with family members with cancer but also what occurs in their social worlds including mass media. Adolescents related cancer to emotions such as sadness and fear. Accordingly, more holistic and factual cancer descriptions, education and psychosocial support are needed to direct cancer messaging and clinical practice. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study suggest that the public and healthcare providers be more aware of how they communicate cancer messages.