Intervention Studies in Cancer and Coronary Heart Disease

Abstract

In Chapter 6,1 attempted to demonstrate that psychosocial factors such as stress and personality are important risk factors in the causation of cancer and coronary heart disease (CHD) and that specific personality constellations, reacting to stress, are particularly cancer prone and CHD prone. These relationships, although much stronger than those linking smoking to cancer and CHD, are still only correlational, and it is well-known that correlations cannot be used directly to infer causation. The best way to indicate that the relations observed are indeed causal is by some intervention method that brings to bear an experimental paradigm on the problem in question. Grossarth-Maticek and I have attempted to do this by using methods of behavior therapy (Eysenck & Martin, 1987) in an attempt to alter the behavior of the cancer-prone or the CHD-prone person in the direction of the healthy type 4. In other words, we have attempted to increase autonomous behavior and reduce the proband’s dependence on other people or his acceptance of situations that lead to negative consequences. This section includes a brief discussion of the methods used and then an evaluation of the effects of using these methods for prophylaxis. (For a more general discussion of prophylactic methods, see Aeberhardt, 1989.)