Emotional expression in cancer onset and progression.

Despite the intensive biomedical research in oncology since World War II, recent studies show a steady increase in age-adjusted mortality for all kinds of cancer. This findings gives impetus to the efforts of researchers who have adopted the biopsychosocial model. Systematic research using such a model has shown several psychosocial factors to be associated with cancer onset and progression, and Temoshok has recently suggested a theoretical model which unifies these findings. In this paper, I consider the evidence that one of these psychosocial factors, emotional expression, may be directly involved in cancer onset and progression. I review 18 relevant studies, discuss how one might operationalize the term 'emotional expression', and make 12 suggestions for future research.