Health Orientation and Fear of Cancer: Implications for Counseling and Integrated Care

The mental health counseling profession’s focus on wellness and prevention puts counselors at an advantage in the developing fields of integrated care and cancer care. To integrate counselors further into the cancer care world, this study investigated how factors related to prevention and wellness (e.g., health orientation and fear of cancer) relate to topics that counselors are adept at addressing, such as optimism, social support, and resilience. Results indicated that health orientation predicted fear of cancer, but that psychosocial variables (i.e., optimism and social support) either had no relationship with cancer fear or were not significant moderators (i.e., resiliency) of the relationship between health orientation and fear of cancer. In particular, health anxiety was the best predictor of cancer fear. Implications for counselors and future research are discussed.