Mass Screening For Prostate Cancer Can Have Unpleasant Consequences

Mass Screening For Prostate Cancer Can Have Unpleasant Consequences.
Health campaigns that highlight the mind-boggler of destitute screening rates for prostate cancer to sanction such screenings seem to have an unintended effect: They discourage men from undergoing a prostate exam, a rejuvenated German study suggests. The finding, reported in the current issue of Psychological Science, stems from ply by a research team from the University of Heidelberg that gauged the intention to get screened for prostate cancer amidst men over the age of 45 who reside in two German cities.

In earlier research, the reflect on authors had found that men who had never had such screenings tended to believe that most men hadn't either. In the prevalent effort, the team exposed men who had never been screened to one of two health facts statements: either that only 18 percent of German men had been screened in the past year, or that 65 percent of men had been screened.

In fact, the researchers respected that both statements are factually accurate, as the first allegation referenced only a one-year screening period while the latter statement reflected lifetime screening patterns. After hearing one or the other statement, the men were asked to call whether they planned to undergo standard screening in the coming year.

The investigators found that those men given indications of higher screening patterns were much more appropriate to think they would get screened. Furthermore, men given information about lower screening patterns were less likely to give basic info (name/address) that would garner them more information about cancer screening.

The authors concluded that a simple shift in sector health messaging could potentially have a big impact on the motivational power of any health promotion campaign, whether the subdue be prostate cancer screening or another important health concern, such as good hygiene or vaccinations. "For us it is so gripping because this is very easy to change," co-author Monika Sieverding said in a news release from the Association for Psychological Science. "There are so many barriers to cancer screening medrxcheck. You cannot modify attitudes easily, or the example of the average cancer screening patient, but it is easy to change the framing of the campaign".