Psychosocial Stress and Cancer

Abstract

There are hundreds of recognized risk factors for cancer, such as smoking, heredity, air pollution, alcohol, poor diet, asbestos, and many others. In recent years, stress has been added as an important psychosocial factor (Alexander, 1950; Eysenck, 1991; Temoshok and Dreher, 1992). The general philosophy underlying this approach has been well put by Sir William Osler (1906), often called the father of English medicine, who said: ‘It is many times much more important to know what patient has the disease than what kind of disease the patient has’ (p. 250). This belief in what is now often called ‘holistic medicine’ in fact goes back over 2000 years; Galen was one of the first, in his book De Tumoribus to suggest a connection between cancer and the melancholic, as opposed to the sanguine temperament, but he was preceded by Hippocrates who voiced a similar view. The belief that there was a cancer-prone type of personality (Type C) was taken for granted by medical practitioners in the nineteenth century (Mettler and Mettler, 1947). Walshe (1846) put the matter very clearly when he wrote: ‘Much has been written on the influence of mental misery, sudden reverses of fortune, and habitual gloominess of temper on the deposition of carcinomatous matter … whether this be the real catenation of circumstances or not, and although the alleged influence of mental disquietude had never been made a matter of demonstration, it would be vain to deny that facts of a very convincing character in respect to the agency of the mind in the production of this disease are frequently observed.’