The question arises why the psychological impact of stigmatization among lung cancer patients seems less than among other cancer patients. A possible explanation could be that we primarily included lung cancer patients with a smoking history. This assumption is based on a cross-sectional study in 213 lung cancer patients showing that the correlation between stigmatization and depressive symptomatology is considerably lower in ever smokers than in never smokers34. An explanation for this phenomenon is that non-smokers need to search for causal attributions for their disease, rendering them more susceptible towards negative stereotypes in society34. With respect to our mediation hypothesis, no previous study investigated body image as a mediator in the relationship between stigmatization and depressive symptomatology. We could show that body image in fact mediated this relationship. Given that body image and depressive symptomatology were shown to be negatively associated, it can be supposed that a better body image could help to reduce this effect.