Our colleague, Ken Pope passes along articles of interest to a large list of professionals. One of the articles he recently sent was titled “Psychological intervention provides enduring health benefits for women with breast cancer.”

The article was quite interesting and contained findings, that if replicated, could be extremely important and promising to women diagnosed with breast cancer. The authors indicated that women receiving psychological intervention for stress reduction reported reduced stress and improvements in emotional distress as compared to those who did not receive the intervention.

More importantly, eleven years later, the women receiving the intervention demonstrated a 45% reduction in risk of breast cancer recurrence. At a later follow up, women who did have a recurrence of their cancer but also received the psychological intervention, had a 59% reduction in their risk of dying of breast cancer. Thus, not only did psychological intervention improve emotional well being, it had a substantial impact on the progression and lethality of their cancers.

Not surprisingly, numerous blogs have picked up on this study. It could be tempting to provide an in depth critique of the article. But that’s not what struck me as the most interesting thing to do at this point. Rather, I feel compelled to comment on the reaction to the article. Although blogs have spread like weeds about the article, the reception in mainstream media has seemed a little muted. Imagine the reaction if a new drug came out that improved women’s emotional well being as well as reduced their chances of cancer recurrence and improved their mortality rates at the levels reported in this study.

It’s hard to believe that there wouldn’t be special shows on 20/20, Dateline, CNN, Anderson Cooper, maybe even Rachel Maddow and. You’d be hearing this drug touted on television ads run by pharmaceutical companies and splashed on front pages of newspapers (still remember what those are?). You couldn’t turn on your car radio without hearing about this new miracle drug (well, you could if you have satellite I guess).

Why isn’t that happening so much with this study? Psychological interventions aren’t quite as sexy and miraculous as quick fixes. Psychological interventions require everyone to work a little. And no one gets rich providing psychological interventions. Sigh.

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New Breast Cancer Treatment Option | Anxiety and OCD Exposed (June 14, 2010)

Prof.Lakshman (June 14, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (June 14, 2010)

New Breast Cancer Treatment Option | Anxiety and OCD Exposed – Women's Health (June 14, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 14 Jun 2010