Psychosocial aspects of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients
Kok, L.P.
Singapore Medical Journal 25(5): 320-323
1984
ISSN/ISBN: 0037-5675 PMID: 6523139 Document Number: 222184
Extensive research was been done on the psychosocial aspects of cancer and it is now felt that social class, occupational, environmental, personality and emotional factors may play a role in the etiology of cancer. Centuries ago, Galen first noticed that melancholic women were more prone to develop breast cancer than women of other temperament. In the late 19th century this idea was revived, and loss and bereavement as a causal agent of cancer was thought to be possible. In the 1950's and 1960's cancer was viewed as a possible psychosomatic illness and present day research is exploring the relationship btween cancer and factors like a loss or lack of closeness to an important childhood figure (usually a parent) and a personality type characterized by difficulty in the expression of hostile emotions, by being submissive, repressed, non-aggressive, and having to adjust to a non-rewarding interpersonal relationship. There is a possibility that such factors may be related to the development of cancer in later life, perhaps through modulation of the immunological function of the hypothalamus or the anterior pituitary or decreasing the responsiveness of the immune system. Psychosocial factors were studied in a group of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients to find out what, it any factors, set them apart from a group of controls.