Researches revealed that mere diagnosis of prostate cancer can be upsetting enough for the patient resulting in either a suicide or fatal heart attack. Risk of suicide is surprisingly found to be double at the news of being diagnosed as a prostate cancer patient.

Data from more than 340,000 prostate cancer patients was diagnosed between 1979 and 2004, and was studied for this research by a team at Harvard and Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston.

Study's Co-author Dr. Lorelei A. Mucci, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School stated, "A cancer diagnosis is an acutely distressful event, and acute stress can cause a number of changes in cardiovascular risk factors and sometimes the diagnosis may be enough to drive someone to suicide".

The new findings were published on February 2 in the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate cancer kills 254,000 men annually world-wide. And this study can be a good help in letting people know that they should prefer counseling when they get their test results.

Mucci further suggested and added, "One of the important considerations for clinical practice, based on our findings, is that a cancer diagnosis is an important moment for physicians to intervene with the cancer patient. The data suggest it is important to think about the whole person, that additional doctors need to be consulted".