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Psychological Aspects of Cancer Screening

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Evaluation of Cancer Screening

Part of the book series: Focus on Cancer ((3292))

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Abstract

This chapter considers the effect of cancer screening on psychological morbidity and the importance of psychological factors to the success of screening programmes. There is ample evidence that patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent cancer suffer psychological morbidity, some of which is avoidable. Physical symptoms of the disease, effects of different treatments and apprehensions about metastasis and death cause some inevitable distress but additional distress is often caused unnecessarily by the patient’s misconceptions and by suboptimal care. Interest in measuring the distress caused specifically by screening is recent, arising from the contention that a cancer screening test, although capable of reducing mortality, might yet not be justified if the psychological harm associated with screening outweighed the benefit [43, 56].

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Authors
  1. Ruth Ellman
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cancer Screening Evaluation Unit, Section of Epidemiology, Institute of Cancer Research, Block D, Cotswold Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5NG, UK

    Jocelyn Chamberlain  & Sue Moss  & 

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Ellman, R. (1996). Psychological Aspects of Cancer Screening. In: Chamberlain, J., Moss, S. (eds) Evaluation of Cancer Screening. Focus on Cancer. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3044-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3044-4_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-19957-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-3044-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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