It is almost consensual, the development of both anxiety and depression, among women diagnosed with breast cancer. Sometimes symptoms remain restricted to the time of diagnosis, but quite often they persist, and even increase after that. However, this same feature, among women with benign tumors, has not yet been well established.

Authors’ aim is to characterize the population of women attending a Breast Disease Diagnosis Unit, including: socio-demographic features, clinical conditions and screening for anxiety and depression. They also pretend to check out differences between the ones with benign and the others with malign disease.

For this purpose they evaluated 150 women, attending Breast Disease Diagnosis Unit of St. John Hospital (Oporto). All of them were first evaluated by a Psychologist, at the time of the histological diagnostic biopsy, and fulfilled a clinical specific protocol, as well as the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS). Patients scoring for borderline (8-10) or pathological levels (» 11) were then reevaluated, after a three month period. Preliminary data shows that a high percentage of women with pathological levels of anxiety and depression symptoms (40%) were diagnosed with benign breast tumor.

First conclusion is about the need for a more attentive clinical behavior, also towards women with benign breast tumors. In fact it seems that they also have a high risk of developing both anxiety and depression.

This is an ongoing study, and the aim is to increase sample size and to better analyze and justify all possible variable correlations.