About 30 to 40 percent of people will experience significant distress after learning that they have cancer, according to James C. Coyne, Ph.D, director of the Behavioral Oncology Program at the Abramson Cancer Center and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. But it tends to resolve after three or four months, he said.
Clinical depression, however, affects about 16 percent of cancer patients, according to a 2011 study published in The Lancet Oncology. Researchers analyzed 94 studies with more than 14,000 patients. Depression was especially common — with 30 to 40 percent of patients affected — when other mood disorders were present.
Depression also appears to affect people with certain cancers to a greater degree, such as oropharyngeal (22–57 percent), pancreatic (33–50 percent), breast (2–46 percent) and lung cancers (11–44 percent), according to Derek Hopko, Ph.D, associate professor at The University of Tennessee and co-author of A Cancer Patient’s Guide to Overcoming Depression and Anxiety: Getting Through Treatment and Getting Back to Your Life.
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–patients might be afraid of being stigmatized for having a mental illness
OK, call it that. Describe it accurately, you have recourse, call it that you surrender.
Harold A. Maio
While most people will understand that dealing with a chronic illness like cancer causes depression, not everyone understands that depression can go on for many months and even years after cancer treatment has ended.
During treatment, patients have structure, support, and are focused on overcoming cancer. But with treatment finished, some patients suddenly find themselves alone and facing an uphill struggle with adjusting to the fall-out of having dealt with a life-threatening illness. Cancer can also bring about job loss and changes to relationships, including family roles and sexual intimacy. Survivors also may fear the cancer will recur, worries that may contribute to psychological distress. All of this adds up to a recipe for depression.
I often think how sad it is that having survived a life-threatening illness such as cancer, the patient goes on to live a life filled with fear, anxiety and depression. With more and more of us surviving a diagnosis of cancer, it is now about the quality of our lives after treatment ends. We need to take a longer view of survivorship and what that means. It is not just about saving a life, but also about how that life is lived in the following years.