Causal attributions to epidemiological risk factors and their associations to later psychological adjustment among Japanese breast cancer patients

Abstract

The current study indicates that forming causal attributions influences the adjustment to the illness in Japanese breast cancer patients and attributions to certain risk factors for breast cancer may contribute to better adjustment.

What causes breast cancer? A systematic review of causal attributions among breast cancer survivors and how these compare to expert-endorsed risk factors

“…They also expressed the stigma that they felt when a diagnosis of cancer was interpreted as "karma" or punishment for their sins by other people who live in their community. Conversely, Oba et al, [35] found that Japanese women who did not identify themselves with a particular religion, did not believe God's will was a cause of their cancer.Previous injury. In nine out of the 24 studies reviewed, participants cited a 'blow' to the breast or previous injury as a cause of their breast cancer [9,13,15,24,[35][36][37][38]42].…”

“…Conversely, Oba et al, [35] found that Japanese women who did not identify themselves with a particular religion, did not believe God's will was a cause of their cancer.…”

“…Despite the lack of evidence that stress causes cancer, sixteen studies found that women attributed their breast cancer to their experience of stress [9,13,15,16,24,[35][36][37][38][40][41][42][43][50][51][52].Moreover, stress was identified as the leading cause of breast cancer in five studies [15,35,37,38,42]. In a study by Oba et al, [35] 70% (n=44) of the sample attributed their cancer to stress.Four out of the sixteen studies which reported stress-related attributions for breast cancer, specifically defined stress as an inability to cope with a stressful situation, such as relationship conflicts, experience of trauma, dealing with loss or grief, and/or coping with a demanding environment [13,38,42,50]. Some women may rationalize stress as an attribution that is beyond their control.…”

“…Risk varies according to the number of relatives with breast cancer and the age at which relatives were diagnosed [30]. Gene linkage studies estimate that the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes, explain between 2.0 and 9.0% of all breast cancers [30][31][32][33].In this review, a family history of breast cancer was one of the personal causes most cited by women.Fifteen of the 24 included studies found that most women with breast cancer attributed their own cancer, at least in part, to family history or genetics [9,13,15,16,24,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43].Across the quantitative studies reviewed, the proportion of the sample in each study who reported that family history was a leading or sole cause of breast [16,24,36,38,42]. In addition, breast cancer patients in six studies included in the review identified oral contraceptive pills as causal [16,24,36,38,40,42], which was identified by 1.5% (n=23)…”

“…The IARC [32] conclude that consumption of alcohol is responsible for 5.0% of breast cancer-related deaths. The use of alcohol or alcohol consumption was identified as a contributing cause of their breast cancer by women in five studies [13,24,35,36,40]with the prevalence of this attribution ranging between 6.7% (n=28) [36] and 25.0% (n=16)[35]. …”