Does stress cause cancer?

There is a widespread public belief that stress can lead to cancer.

Over the last twenty years there have been many scientific studies looking at whether there really is a relationship between stress and cancer. These studies have used a number of different methods. Some have looked at women with benign and malignant (cancerous) breast lumps and compared the number of major stressful events in the five years or so before their condition was diagnosed, to see if the women with cancers had suffered more stress. Others have followed the lives of people who have been bereaved, or who were prisoners of war, to see if these stresses led to a greater chance of cancer developing in the future when compared to the normal population.

When the results of all these studies are analysed there is absolutely no evidence that stress does cause cancer.

At the end of the day stressful life events - bereavement, divorce, redundancy, moving house and so on are very common and inevitably many people who develop cancer will have experienced one or more of these in the few years before their tumour was discovered. Doctors often don't know the cause of any particular cancer and people are distressed to find that there is no definite explanation as to why they developed cancer. They find it very plausible to believe that their cancer was caused by stress but there is no scientific evidence to suggest that these events are any commoner for cancer patients than for the population at large.