COLON-CANCER - PERSONALITY-FACTORS PREDICTIVE OF ONSET AND STAGE OF PRESENTATION

This study examined premorbid personality correlates of colon cancer a nd stage of presentation of colon cancer to health care providers. Six ty-one male veterans who completed the MMPI between 1947 and 1975 and were then diagnosed with colon cancer between 1977 and 1988 were match ed with control patients. A 21-factor solution of the MMPI [1] was use d to seek potential personality differences between colon cancer cases and their controls in terms of presence of colon cancer and stage of presentation for this disease. A stepwise conditional regression analy sis found significant differences between the colon cancer and control groups on the Aggressive Hostility variable (p<0.018). A multivariate analysis of variance conducted across the stages of colon cancer pres entation found that patients who presented later on for colon cancer h ad higher Phobia scores (p<0.05). Religious Fundamentalism was also re lated to presentation (p<0.05), but in a nonlinear manner. Discussion is related to previous findings regarding the relationship between per sonality and development of cancer, as well as to implications for pat ient screening.