Cancer-associated medical care is an evolving specialty that requires a multidisciplinary approach, so biomedical intervention must be associated with psychosocial support, in which psychooncology offers a fundamental intervention to improve the quality of life of patients and their families, allowing them to better manage all emotions related to the diagnosis of the disease.
If there is one thing that we certainly enjoy every day, it is all the advances that arise in terms of the prevention and treatment of this disease. Interventions are much more personalized and approaches based on immuno-oncological therapies, for example, demonstrate great superiority over more traditional treatments.
- “Sometimes.
- During consultations.
- We see patients looking at the monitor and forget how much it is necessary to look them in the eye to make them feel like people” – Anabel Heiniger.
- Hematologist specializing in childhood leukemia in Mali-.
Medical intervention itself, always basic and essential, is essential for patients to have these resources aimed at meeting the psychological and social needs they may have, so we need trained and specialized professionals in these areas that help us better cope with the impact of cancer.
And that’s not all. It is essential that doctors and oncologists are also trained to promote adequate communication, through which families and patients can always make the best decisions. Moreover, not least, psychooncology should also be oriented towards a priority area: prevention.
The fact that someone helps us change certain habits and behaviors sensitive to cancer development, such as smoking or sun exposure, is also part of this multidisciplinary approach necessary for any modern society sensitive to cancer.
Diagnosing cancer means a silent shock, an unknown reality for which no one is preparing us, sometimes the process involves an unso empowered emotional health professional, who assists his patients by looking at his computer screen, not the eyes of those who feel lost. and I don’t know how to react.
The world stops and patients feel they are entering a freezer, where the echo repeats a word: death. However, anyone who has gone through this difficult experience knows that the term “cancer” is not always synonymous with “end”. Cancer is a struggle, it is a struggle, it gathers all the internal forces present and yet to come to face this experience, which thousands and thousands of people face every year.
However, there is one thing that can help us from the beginning: not make this journey to solitude. Family, doctors, nurses and psychologists form a team where everything follows a pattern, an order, a breakthrough.
The field of psychooncology is quite new. In fact, its founder died just a year ago without most people knowing his name and his relevant contribution in this field. Jimmie C. Holland led the psychiatry department at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Jimmie Holland has realized the limited knowledge he had so far about the emotional experience of people with cancer. Doctors were not at all trained in this area, to the point of omitting that cancer patients also had a depressive disorder.
Dr. Holland decided to lay the foundation for psychooncology, established the American Association of Psychosocial Oncology (APO), and also founded the medical journal Psychooncology.
Thanks to your work, the quality of life of millions of patients has been improved, and according to several studies, such as the one published in the Journal of Oncology Nursing, focusing solely on the biomedical vision of cancer would be a mistake. The World Health Organization itself stresses that there cannot be complete health without mental health. Jimmie Holland laid the foundations and mechanisms of the psychosocial approach to providing a broader and more comprehensive response to cancer treatment.
As reported in studies such as the one published in The Lancet Psychiatry, about 25% of patients diagnosed with cancer develop an affective disorder, so specialized psychological support in this area can help us treat and prevent many conditions and circumstances that can occur. anytime.
So, let’s see what functions are being considered and developed by psychooncology.
At the stage of the disease, the impact of stressors depends on the individual characteristics of the individual, the psychooncologist is trained and prepared to reduce these situations, minimize suffering and propose valuable strategies so that, as far as possible, the person goes through each step, time and circumstance in the best way.
Psychooncology is therefore fundamental in this multidisciplinary approach to cancer treatment, its presence not only improves adaptation to the disease itself, but allows the patient to better cope with this process and, finally, it can be said that in short it is able to improve the results of the intervention, increasing the chances of overcoming cancer.