Existential distress in cancer: Alleviating suffering from fundamental loss and change

The relief of existential suffering.

Advanced and progressive illnesses bring existential suffering to patients as an inevitable consequence of the disease and its treatment. Physicians need a typology of existential distress to aid its recognition and improved management. The major forms of existential challenge include (1) death anxiety, (2) loss and change, (3) freedom with choice or loss of control, (4) dignity of the self, (5...

The Effect of a Communicational Program on Psychological Distress in the Elderly Suffering from Cancer

BACKGROUND Psychological distress is one of the most common psychological symptoms in elderly cancer patients. However, many of these patients do not receive any treatment for distress management. Therefore, we aimed to assess the effect of a communication program on the psychological distress of elderly cancer patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS This two-group clinical trial with a before and af...

Alleviating suffering 101--pain relief in the United States.

n engl j med 366;3 nejm.org january 19, 2012 197 $635 billion per year, according to Relieving Pain in America,1 the recent report of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee that we cochaired. And these figures don’t include pain in children or people in long-term care facilities, the military, or prison. The annual U.S. expenditures related to pain (including direct medical costs and lost wag...

Heroism, Suffering, and Change

Loss of self: a fundamental form of suffering in the chronically ill.

Physical pain, psychological distress and the deleterious effects of medical procedures all cause the chronically ill to suffer as they experience their illnesses. However, a narrow medicalized view of suffering, solely defined as physical discomfort, ignores or minimizes the broader significance of the suffering experienced by debilitated chronically ill adults. A fundamental form of that suff...