Ten year literature on psychological and behavioral interventions against cancer: a terms analysis

We here performed a systematic review of PBIC literature using terms analysis in a hope of both identifying potential trends and patterns and exploring methods leveraging traditional literature reviews in this specific area. Articles meeting inclusion criteria were retrieved from PUBMED and translated into dichotomized article records representing presence or non-presence of MeSH terms and a metric consisting of numbers of times of co- occurrence between all pairs of terms identified using a self-designed program. The occurrence of and relations among the terms were calculated and visualized using Excel2007 and UCINET respectively. A total of 1,742 terms were identified from 997 articles retrieved. Put in a descending order, the lines representing the times of term occurrence formed a typical hyperbolic curve; when plotted along the x-axis of whole MESH terms, the lines clustered within four specific regions. Comparison of term occurrence between 2002 and 2011 revealed priority changes in population and subjects (from general groups to priority groups), intervention approaches (from medicine to exercise and psychotherapy), methodology and techniques (from cohort studies to randomized controlled trials) and outcomes (from health and mental health to quality of life, depression etc.). Networks of the terms featured a number of closely linked groups of topics including method and questionnaires, therapy and outcomes, survival management, psychological assessment and intervention, behavioral intervention (individual and community oriented). Terms analysis revealed interesting trends and patterns about PBIC publications and both the analysis methods and findings have implications for future research and literature reviews.