Overview
Many books and articles focus only on selected aspects of the impact of behavior on cancer (for example, the effects of smoking on lung cancer risk). But this book offers a comprehensive and in-depth examination of a broad range of behavioral factors as direct and indirect contributors to cancer risk.
Levy examines the behavioral factors that affect everything from likelihood of getting cancer to the effectiveness of treatments for it. She summarizes evidence correlating factors such as exposure to sunlight with cancer incidence, describes the biology of malignant tumors, rates the efficacy of various screening technologies, and discusses the implications of factors such as patient compliance for treatment success.
Levy gives instruction on effective intervention techniques for discouraging cancer-causing behavior, outlines the role clinicians can play in uncovering occupational carcinogens in their patients' work environments, identifies the high-risk groups for various types of cancer, and recommends ways to make screening programs more accessible to them. She provides guidelines for enhancing patient compliance, shows how stress and other psychological states can affect cancer growth, and uses this information to make recommendations for improved psychotherapeutic techniques.
Although this book was written in the mid-eighties, much of the evidence linking behavioral factors and cancer as a multiple disease process—particularly life-style factors such as sun screen and tobacco use, as well as compliance factors contributing to risk in cancer treatment outcome—still holds.