The role of mental outlook on cancer remains controversial, with some studies suggesting that it might play a role.

BBC: Positive thinkers 'avoid cancer'

Her communism was "more of a mental outlook" officers wrote, and her boss at Vogue, Harry Yoxall "has chaffed her about it".

BBC: Today - The Lee Miller file

The latest study looked at 255 women with breast cancer and compared their answers in a questionnaire on mental outlook and life events with 367 healthy control subjects.

BBC: Positive thinkers 'avoid cancer'

When thinking about the mind, past philosophers have tended either to accept some sort of materialism roughly the view that consciousness is a physical state of the brain or to take the dualist outlook that mental and physical things, minds and brains, were irreducibly different.

ECONOMIST: Philosophy of consciousness