People diagnosed with cancer are at a greater risk of mental health problems even five years after their diagnosis, according to a large-scale study of data from UK GP patient records. Patterns varied by cancer type, with substantially raised risks of suicide and non-fatal self-harm among certain cancers with poor survival, such as lung and pancreatic cancer. The research was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and published in eClinical Medicine .
The team analyzed data from 853,177 adults who were diagnosed with cancer between 1998 and 2018, which was matched with 8,106,643 cancer-free individuals to enable comparison. The analysis focused on the 20 most common cancers: oral cavity, oesophageal, stomach, colorectal, liver, pancreatic, lung, malignant melanoma, breast (female), cervical, uterine, ovarian, prostate, kidney, bladder, central nervous system, thyroid, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma and leukemia. They found that those who had been diagnosed with cancer remained at increased risk of experiencing new episodes of anxiety and depression, both in the short term and more than five years after diagnosis, compared to people who had not had cancer.
The risks of adverse mental health outcomes were generally higher for people with cancer types with poorer prognosis: those with malignant melanoma had around 10-20% increased risk of anxiety and depression, whereas lung cancer patients were almost 3 times more likely to develop anxiety and d.