Informing cancer patient in relation to his type of personality: the controlling-orderly (obsessive) patient.

The questions "Do you tell the diagnosis or not? How much information do you reveal? Who do you inform about the diagnosis and/or what do you tell" are very frequent during scientific discussions. Must the patients know or do they also have the right not to know? Is it possible to determine who should be told what, when and how? Is it possible individualizing the informing of a cancer patient according to his character or type of personality? The aim of this paper was to describe the Controlling- Orderly (C-O) character, so any therapist can build up an information strategy to cancer patients. This study took place within the framework of Consulting- Liaison (C-L) psychiatry and included: 1) Training groups in which doctors and nurses participated. 2) The section of C-L Psychiatry of the Psychiatry Department. 3) The training activity in the framework of C-L Psychiatry. 4) The annual seminars of psychooncology for health professionals. How a doctor could use the characteristics of a C-O patient for an empathetic approach and correctly inform him. And how to approach his denial and family in order to tailor the information strategy. Understanding the personality type of C-O patient, his denial mechanisms and the dynamics within his family maximizes the therapist's empathetic approach towards the cancer patient. The therapist can respond at "what, when and how" about to break bad news. A therapist must take into account the main C-O patient characteristics (control and order), as well as the attributes or cognitions: the tendency to use reason, the mechanism of rationalization by which he exercises mental control that leads to doubt. The denial degree is small to minimal, while the degree of information is large to very large.