Results
The results showed that at eight weeks the patients receiving the APT had significantly
higher scores on fighting spirit and significantly lower scores on helplessness, anxious
preoccupation, fatalism, anxiety, psychological symptoms and orientation towards
health care than the control patients. At four months, patients receiving the APT had
significantly lower scores than the controls on anxiety, psychological symptoms and
psychological distress.
Conclusion
The authors concluded that APT improves the psychological well-being of cancer patients
who show increased psychological problems and that some of these improvements
persist for up to four months. They suggest that APT relates to ‘improvement in the
psychological dimension of the quality of life of cancer patients’.
Personality/coping style and longevity
In 1991, Eysenck and Grossarth-Maticek reported a study whereby they selected ‘at-
risk’ individuals who were healthy (the controls) and another group of individuals (the
experimental group) who showed conflict-avoiding and emotion-suppression type per-
sonality (a type C/cancer-prone personality). The experimental group received cognitive
behavioural therapy in an attempt to change how they dealt with stress. At follow-up,
the authors reported that this group showed a decrease in mortality rate compared
with the controls who did not receive the cognitive behavioural therapy. In a further
study by Temoshok and Fox (1984), the results from a 15-year follow-up of women with
breast cancer indicated that poor outcome was associated with a passive, helplessness
coping style. However, it has been questioned as to whether the personality styles
predicted to be associated with different illnesses are distinct (Amelang and Schmidt-
Rathjens 1996).
There is no relationship between psychological factors
and longevity
However, not all research has pointed to an association between psychological
factors and longevity. Barraclough et al. (1992) measured the severe life events, social
difficulties and depression at baseline in a group of breast cancer patients, and followed
them up after 42 months. Of a total of 204 subjects, 26 died and 23 per cent relapsed.
However, the results showed no relationship between these outcomes and the psycho-
social factors measured at baseline. These results caused debate in the light of earlier
studies and it has been suggested that the absence of a relationship between life events
and outcome may be due to the older age of the women in Barraclough and co-workers’
study, the short follow-up period used, and the unreported use of chemotherapy
(Ramirez et al. 1992).
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