Psychological aspects of monitoring high risk women for breast cancer.

BACKGROUND: There is a paucity of knowledge pertaining to the attitudes, feelings, and emotions of women who are at increased familial risk for breast cancer and how these concerns will affect their surveillance behavior. A review of the literature shows an unevenness in the conclusions about these matters, with some reports indicating that anxiety aroused in the familial cancer setting may abet surveillance behavior, whereas other data indicates a negative effect.
METHODS: The authors reported anecdotal accounts of such behavior in women from hereditary breast and hereditary breast-ovarian cancer prone families.
RESULTS: Although these responses of fear, anxiety, and apprehension about cancer risk are not unique to this hereditary cohort, they nevertheless must have been tempered by often life-long exposure of cancer occurrences that may have decimated their families.
CONCLUSIONS: All accounts agree with the need to devote more research to the special needs--psychological, social, insurance, and general public health measures--of these high risk women.