Social Trauma as Related to Cancer of the Breast

Abstract

A number of writers, primarily in the field of psychophysiology, have suggested that breast cancer may be related to a variety of untoward psychological states and that these may be related in turn to having experienced misfortune in the social milieu. Other research has indicated that endocrine function may figure in the etiology of this disease. For these reasons, we wished to examine the relationship between the experiencing of social trauma which could induce endocrine effect and the development of cancer of the breast. We hypothesized that breast cancer cases, more often than controls, would have encountered traumatic incidents in their social milieu in the 5-year period prior to the diagnosis of their disease.

Three hundred and fifty-two breast cancer cases and 670 controls with other types of cancer and non-neoplastic diseases of organs other than the breast and genitalia from Roswell Park Memorial Institute were interviewed. Comparisons were made concerning the extent to which the subjects and their immediate and extended families incurred such life events as death, divorce, illness, economic want, residential mobility, and feelings of being upset. No difference was found between the breast cancer cases and the controls either in the experiencing of single events or cumulative numbers of events by themselves or by members of their families. There may be events of a different type, not studied here, which are related to the development of cancer of the breast.