Cancer in a psychosomatic perspective

Abstract

Cancer as a life-threatening disease brings intense feeling of anxiety and insecurity to patients and their family members. Improvements by early detection and its treatment, the increase of survival, and the aging populations make cancer more chronic and require attention to long-term adjustment and coping [1]. These are reasons to take serious the psychosocial problems of cancer patients and to apply appropriate interventions to these patients. They hold true for their family members and proxies too, e.g., partner, children, siblings, grandparents, and friends whose lives are also affected by this disease. So, on the average one new cancer case may often directly affect 10 persons. This suggests that cancer needs to be seen in a psychosomatic perspective. Efforts to study the influence of psychological factors on the development of cancer and its progress were still so far not so successful [2]. However, psychosocial problems of cancer patients are mainly related to mind-body relationship, although the cause of cancer is in the body. Therefore, we gain insight into cancer from the knowledge of psychosomatic medicine.