The connection between the psychological condition of breast cancer patients and survival. A follow-up after eight years.

Forty breast cancer patients (Stage I, II) were interviewed in 1984. Eight years later, in 1992, 8 of the 40 women had died in the intervening period of time, another 7 women had developed bone metastases, and the remaining 25 women had no evidence of disease. The main findings of this study indicate that the psychological distress, anxiety, hostility, paranoid ideation and psychoticism, as well as the Global Severity Index (GSI), of the eight patients who died during the 8 years following diagnosis were more severe at the time of diagnosis than that of the patients who survived. Moreover, the findings indicate that severity of anxiety may predict length of survival.