Defensive strategies, such as denying immediacy of testing or exempting oneself, are key barriers to at-home colorectal cancer screening, according to study results published in Cancer.
“Various emotional and attitudinal barriers to colorectal cancer screening participation, including fatalism, a fear of cancer, a desire to not know if one has cancer, disgust, embarrassment and beliefs that screening will be uncomfortable or inconvenient, have been identified,” Nicholas Clarke, PhD, a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Psychology at Dublin City University, and colleagues wrote. “Other potential emotional and behavioral responses are emerging but have received less attention; one example is defensive information processing (DIP).”