Mental health and distress in cancer patients

Abstract

Purpose: Identify mental health problems and distress in cancer patients; recognise the obstacles to their detection and the lack of specific psychological care for patients who need it; and determine the pathways that are being developed to address them. A true understanding of these problems would facilitate the design, implementation and improvement of health-care resources for oncologic patients. Methods: Literature review of the investigations on the subject from the last decades. Results: During their illness, cancer patients show a high prevalence of psychopathological disorders, anxiety symptoms, depression and distress, related to several medical, physical, psychological and social factors. To discover the protective and predictive factors of worsening, data analysis does not indicate the real punctual prevalence of these disorders and symptoms -mainly due to the different investigation methods used-, neither does it show the evolution during the illness and afterwards. Several barriers make psychological assessment of cancer patients difficult, this leads to a lack of specific and specialised attention when needed, a clinic worsening of these patients and difficulty in adhesion to medical treatments. Training in communication tools for sanitary professionals and the development of distress and mental disorder detection tools, according to the clinic reality of the patients, are the solutions preferred in this last decade, though with irregular results. Conclusions: In order to offer cancer patients a specific psychological attention when needed, mental health problems and distress detection tools need to keep improving. A real knowledge of these problems will result in the design of specialised psycho-oncological and clinic psychological assistance programmes. To guarantee access and coordination with the psychologist in medical teams is essential.