Using data from the Walnut Creek Contraceptive Drug Study (a prospective study begun in 1969 and continuing to the present), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-(MMPI) measured scores for depression of 8932 women were studied in relation to the incidence of breast cancer. No statistically significant association between MMPI scores for depression and the subsequent development of breast cancer was found. There was neither an association of risk of breast cancer with repression/sensitization as measured on the MMPf nor with scores on the MMPl lie scale. This study is unique because it represents the largest reported prospective cohort in which the association between depression and breast cancer development has been examined. Cancer 61:845-848, 1988. TUDIES OF THE PSYCHOLOGIC ASPECTS of cancer S can be regarded in two general categories. Research has been done most frequently in the first category in which the most frequent psychologic effects of cancer are evaluated. Examples of such research include that done by Koenig et al.,' who used the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to evaluate the psychologic status of a group of cancer patients with advanced disease; and the studies by Sobel and Worden:,3 who examined the MMPI as a longitudinal predictor of psychologic adaptation to cancer.
Studies in the second category attempt to provide data to support the hypothesis that psychologic factors have etiologic importance in the development or course of illness. Psychoanalysis and psychology have contributed greatly to the theories that depression and loss are factors that may predispose a person to cancer. These theories also suggest that denial, repression, inability to deal appropriately with anger, and strong internalized From the