LONELINESS, EMOTIONAL REPRESSION, MARITAL QUALITY, AND MAJOR LIFE EVENTS IN WOMEN WHO DEVELOP BREAST-CANCER

Women awaiting mammograms at a breast clinic were given questionnaires to investigate the role of psychosocial variables in the development of breast cancer while controlling for established breast cancer risk factors. Questionnaires to determine loneliness, emotional repression, marital quality, and major life changes were completed by 826 female volunteers who were later classified into groups according to their di agnoses. The total emotional repression score showed a hierarchy of mo st repression to least repression for the most-diseased to the most-he althy subjects. A breakdown of the emotional repression scale revealed that each group was significantly different from the other in suppres sion of anger and unhappiness. Women in the new cancer group showed si gnificantly more loneliness than the women in the fibrocystic and norm al groups. The newly diagnosed cancer group also had a higher proporti on of women who experienced the death of a spouse or close family memb er within the past two years compared to the other groups.