Emotional costs of cancer

• April 25, 2024

Psycho-oncology focuses on research in various ways to achieve face an oncological disease, the factors that influence it and the psychotherapeutic strategies that are useful to improve the quality of life. However, there is very little information disseminated on this subject, according to the publication of the study "Resilience oncology, case study: adolescents, resilience and death".

The author of the study and Manager of the Emotional Support Program of the House of Friendship for Children with Cancer, María Diana Montelongo Niño, mentions that the stage of adolescence is a phase characterized by a identity crisis marked by both physical and psychic changes. "Generally the adolescent feels immortal, and sees death as something distant and risk as a pleasure. But it has been proven that by experiencing discomfort in your body you become hypochondriacal and more sensitive. "

Unlike children or adolescents who suffer from temporary diseases, adolescents who have a chronic disease face reality that it will not disappear and may even get worse over time. There are even investigations carried out by the American Academy of Psychiatry for Children and Adolescents that indicate that a child or adolescent who suffers from a chronic disease such as cancer runs the risk of developing psychological problems related to their illness.

During adolescence, young people seek to have a positive image of themselves, which is threatened by the presence of chronic illness and causes feelings such as anxiety and intensification of emotional disorders.

"I think that when you are older you are somehow better prepared, it is not atypical in your age group," says Dr. Dawn Hershman, co-director of the breast cancer program Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, at Columbia University Medical Center. "When you are young you feel that you are the only one in your situation. Everyone wants to help but nobody else knows what it feels like ” 

Video Medicine: Childhood Cancer: Emotional and Financial Toll (April 2024).