What factors do cancer patients believe contribute to the development of their cancer? (New South Wales, Australia)

Abstract

Cancer patients specified a broad range of factors and agents to which their disease may be attributed. Some of these were poorly correlated with epidemiological rankings of attributable risk factors. The role of psychosocial and genetic factors was overstated. Misconceptions regarding the causes of cancer are a key consideration of health professionals when devising communication strategies around cancer prevention.

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

“…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 review suggests that many breast cancer survivors and patients believe that stress contributes to the development of breast 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.…”

“…God's will) are causes of breast cancer. A total of 15 studies reported that breast cancer patients viewed these factors as causal to their own breast cancer [9,13,14,16,35,36,[39][40][41][42][43]45,50,52,53] attributing their cancer to God's will meant a predetermined future in which cancer treatments would not be curative. 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.…”

“…Despite the availability of information on breast cancer risk factors, eleven studies included in the review reported a number of women who indicated that they "don't know" the cause of their cancer when asked [9,14,16,[37][38][39][40]43,50,52]. It was found that 6-57% of women said that they did not know the Other factors, such as the socio-demographic background of participants in the included studies may have contributed to the variations in attribution prevalence observed.…”

“…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)…”