The psychological profile of women attending breast-screening tests

Though the benefits of early detection of breast cancer are generally known, only few women attend breast-screening examinations. The study was designed to gain insight into the problem by exploring the psychological profile of clinic attenders. In order to find out whether there is such a profile, 210 self-referred women were compared with 210 nonattending women, from the same working and social environments, matched in age, education and occupational level. All subjects were administered 10 tests in 7 domains. The tests were administered as part of a health survey. The results showed that clinic attenders scored higher on negative emotions and total emotions and lower on positive emotions; higher on repression; lower on daydreams; lower on range of self-concept, references to others and negative self-references but higher on positive self-references; scored higher on self-references describing oneself in a functional and in a passive way and scored lower on those describing oneself in terms of one's attitudes, body and appearance; scored lower on neuroticism; scored lower on different somatic complaints and health orientation but higher in alexithymia. No differences were found in authoritarianism, locus of control and self-complexity. Conclusions are that there is a psychological profile of clinic attenders, that it is focused on dysphoric emotions, psychological disease promotion and defensiveness and that it includes characteristics of the construct that is sometimes called the cancer-prone personality.