HEALING TOUCH
Cancer survival gets better with a good support system
Cancer management and therapy do not only mean physical treatment. They go beyond tapping medical breakthroughs and scientific advances, giving affordable and quality medicines, or adopting single or combination treatment. They involve the deepest recesses of priorities, plans, and motivation of life. Cancer patients, their families, and doctors not only seek the most affordable and best treatment available, but also look for hope and emotional support.
Common sense says that people with serious illnesses would need strong social and emotional support from those around them as well as medical treatment. Evidence-based medicine also has actually reached similar conclusions--that a person's state of mind is a major factor in healing.
Studies have come out already that evidence-based medicine needs supportive therapy to reap the best results.
In a 1989 study, Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel highlighted the survival advantage of "emotional expression." Published in The Lancet (October 14, 1989), the study found that patients with metastatic breast cancer who had support-group therapy were more likely to live longer than those who had not.
At 10-year follow-up, only three of the 86 study participants were alive. However, when death records were analyzed, Spiegel found that survival (from time of randomization and onset of intervention) was longest for those who received psychosocial intervention. One-third of them were still alive at 48 months of entering the study. The average survival-time for this group was 36 months compared with the control group's 19 months.
The study was based on the premise that psychotherapy helps not only to reduce pain, anxiety, and fatigue but also actually enhances seriously ill patients' chances of living longer and better. If patients are able to express their negative emotions, they are in a sense releasing a significant part of the burden of illness and would not be as distracted while they try to cope with having a serious disease and being treated for it.
That cancer patients can often be depressed and in pain has always been known, but Spiegel's work studies how these emotions influence survival and quality of life and how--if these emotions were adequately addressed--survival and quality of life can be improved.
His other studies have also looked into the contribution of support systems to cancer patients' coping mechanisms. Spiegel pointed out the need to recognize the extraordinary sense of isolation cancer patients experience. Psychosocial intervention can counter this because, explained Spiegel in a paper published in Cancer in 1990, a "direct but sympathetic examination of the patient's vulnerability and means of coping with it will reduce rather than amplify death anxiety."
"Cancer is an awful experience," a neurologist who had breast cancer, Dr. Socorro Martinez, shared with MEDICAL OBSERVER once (April 2005), "but it is also a positive force for change"-given proper treatment, the right information, and plenty of support.
She related that being able to ventilate one's feelings of bitterness, anger, and guilt lessens the sense of isolation. It helps with the pain, allows bonding among family members and friends, improves the quality of life, and enhances self-confidence.
Her experience adds credence to the idea that a support-group system is a valuable component in cancer management. "It helps a lot when our emotions are validated by people we love and trust," she explained.
Also, support groups can be good source of information about the disease and its management. According to the Philippine Cancer Society (PCS), a low level of cancer consciousness among Filipinos is why cancer remains a leading cause of death in the country. Those with cancer are already in their advanced stages when they decide to consult a doctor.
M. Ciriacruz
Supporting role to stellar role
Setting up a system where access to group support is made easy has, for so many years, not really been much of a priority in cancer management. It has always been the disease or the body parts with the disease that are the focus of treatment.
Fortunately, several big institutions are now getting involved with setting up cancer support groups.
A cancer-support-group summit was held on April 22 last year as part of an effort to build a strong and continuous network of cancer-support groups, by bringing together cancer patients, their families, friends, caregivers, and cancer specialists under one roof to share updates on cancer therapy and themselves--their issues, concerns, and stories. Spearheaded by Biomedis Oncology with partner PCS, the summit aimed to empower those involved in it to develop various activities, which will help them realize that there are no barriers for their capacity to enjoy life to its fullest.
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