Cancer mortalities linked to depression
BEIJING. September 17. KAZINFORM People with cancer who are depressed are more likely to die than patients with good mental health, psychologists report in the science journal Cancer; Kazinform refers to China Daily.
The study reports that death rates from cancer "were up to 25 percent higher in patients experiencing depressive symptoms and up to 39 percent higher in patients diagnosed with major or minor depression".
"In both of those groups, you can predict cancer mortality," says lead researcher Jillian Satin, of the University of British Columbia.
While the study's main conclusion is a call for more research on the links between cancer and mental health, Satin says the results also prove the link is significant.
"I think depression should always be taken seriously," she adds. "It would be my wish that this line of research fuels adding psychological social treatment into standard cancer care."
The study by Satin and co-authors Wolfgang Linden and Melanie Phillips was an overview, called a meta-analysis, of 26 previous studies on the effect of depression on the progression of cancer and survival rates of 9,417 patients.
Satin says the researchers controlled for the chicken-or-egg factor: Do people become depressed because they are sick with cancer? Or does cancer kill them more often when they have depression independent of the cancer?
"That's the million-dollar question," she says. "Even after correcting for that, we still see the positive relationship between depression predicting mortality"; Kazinform cites China Daily.