On a mild, late summer evening, the skyline of Atlanta turned indigo as the city heeded a call to publicize prostate cancer awareness by bathing its buildings in rich, blue light.
If you look carefully, you can see other signs that September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. The porch lights on thousands of America’s homes are glowing azure, and 19,000 signatures have appeared on an e-petition urging President Obama to "Light the White House Blue" during September (lightthewhitehouseblue.org).
Courtesy www.whatdoyouwearbluefor.com
The city of Atlanta showed its support of prostate cancer awareness by illuminating its buildings in blue.
Beginning to link the color blue to prostate cancer in the minds of Americans is a start.
But at the time of this writing, the White House is still lit with white light, and, in a potentially confusing turn, an autism group has also urged the First Family to switch the bulbs to blue to illuminate its worthy cause.
With breast cancer awareness advertised on rosy postage stamps and bras, bracelets and car magnets, it hardly seems necessary to ask the White House to think pink with its lighting scheme. Prostate cancer awareness advocates are far behind in the marketing game, and they know it.
"Breast cancer groups would probably laugh at my numbers," admitted Darryl Mitteldorf, LCSW, executive director of malecare.org, organizer of the Blue Bulb Brigades (the prostate cancer awareness porch light campaign) and America’s largest network of online prostate support groups.
With an active e-mail list of 60,000 addresses, he takes heart that a tiny blue ray of hope may be illuminating the bleak landscape that has long been the state of prostate cancer advocacy, and, in turn, the real research dollars and prostate cancer support programs that follow.
The incidence of prostate cancer is nearly identical to that of breast cancer (217,730 cases, or 28% of total cancer diagnoses in U.S. men in 2010, compared with 207,090 cases of breast cancer or 28% of total cases in women). Breast cancer mortality is only slightly higher, at 39,840 deaths in 2010 compared with 32,050 prostate cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.
From there, the numbers diverge.
By Betsy Bates Freed, Psy.D.
A study I presented in August at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association compared published studies on support for prostate cancer vs. breast cancer, both illnesses that pose profound psychological challenges to patients in terms of threatened mortality, disfigurement, and diminished sexual image and function.
Treatments for aggressive prostate cancer may create additional burdens in the form of incontinence, but suffice it to say that each illness can profoundly impact the psychological well-being of the patient and family. It would seem reasonable to assume that research is needed to best understand how to address those needs.
Using the National Library of Medicine’s database PubMed and search terms "breast" "cancer" and "psychosocial," the database turned up 1,539 studies. Substituting the word, "prostate" for "breast," the same search elicited 259.
I tried a vast array of keywords, with the same disparate results: "adjustment" (3,681 studies to 926), "support" (86,504 studies vs. 35,821), "distress" (1,321 studies vs. 280), and "quality of life" (5,529 vs. 3,524).
More broadly, a search of "women" vs. "men" and the keywords "cancer" and "psychology," turned up 7,600 more studies with the keywords psychology-cancer-women than psychology-cancer-men.
Sure, counting published studies is a crude way to measure research priorities or funding, but the trend is abundantly clear.
In their pink tennis shoes, breast cancer activists have been loud and clear in demanding support, recognition, research, and the dollars that make it all happen. Is there a man, woman, or child alive in America today who doesn’t recognize the poignant meaning of a pink ribbon?
I say, more power to them. Their tireless efforts mean that women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011 have access to a wealth of survivors, support groups, and psychological programs proven effective through research and put into place in communities everywhere.
So now, let’s get Willie Nelson out there singing "Blue Skies," rallying the guys, their families, and friends to fight for the same access, dollars, and recognition that their sunset-ribboned sisters have long insisted upon.
Betsy Bates Freed is a clinical psychologist in Santa Barbara, Calif., and a medical journalist. She has no relevant financial disclosures.