High Incidence Of PTSD Among Cancer Patients

[raypeatclips]

High Incidence of PTSD Among Cancer Patients

Some of you Reddit frequenters may have already seen this one.

"The incidence of PTSD 6 months post-diagnosis was 21.7%, dropping to 6.1% after 4 years follow-up. Despite the decrease in PTSD prevalence, an estimated 33% of patients that were diagnosed with PTSD were still experiencing persistent symptoms - in many cases worsening - at the time of the 4-year follow-up."

"Patients often skip oncologist visits as well out of fear of triggering memories of the experience, Chan said. Charles Raison, MD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconson-Madison, told MD Magazine that older studies done on cancer patients found that many of them turned to alcohol to deal with their stressors."


This made me wonder if the simple diagnosis of cancer is what could cause people to die from their cancer, and would they have survived, or lived for longer at least, had they not had the dreaded diagnosis? People link getting diagnosed with cancer as proof they have a limited time left to live, and it seems like it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

 

[pimpnamedraypeat]

Most likely there's a positive correlation between likelihood to get cancer and likelihood to get PTSD.
Most likely that's mediated by the things we talk about on this forum.

But they cherrypicked patients who were distressed at getting cancer to do this study on.

A prospective, longitudinal study was conducted in a cohort of 469 consecutively recruited patients (aged ≥18 years) with various cancer types within 1 month of diagnosis at a single oncology referral center. Only patients who had significant psychological distress (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale total cutoff score ≥16) underwent the PTSD module of the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (SCID) at at 6-months follow-up.

All patients completed the SCID at the 4-year follow-up assessment regardless of their initial Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale score.

When they surveyed all patients at the 4 year mark they only got 6.1

In an analysis combining patients who had both full and subsyndromal PTSD, there was a 21.7% incidence of PTSD at the 6-month follow-up assessment (n = 44 of 203 SCID-interviewed patients), with rates dropping to 6.1% at the 4-year follow-up assessment (n = 15 of 245 SCID-interviewed patients). Patients with breast cancer (compared with those who had other types of cancer) were 3.68 times less likely to develop PTSD at 6-months, but not at 4-years follow-up.

 

[kimbriel]

High Incidence of PTSD Among Cancer Patients

Some of you Reddit frequenters may have already seen this one.

"The incidence of PTSD 6 months post-diagnosis was 21.7%, dropping to 6.1% after 4 years follow-up. Despite the decrease in PTSD prevalence, an estimated 33% of patients that were diagnosed with PTSD were still experiencing persistent symptoms - in many cases worsening - at the time of the 4-year follow-up."

"Patients often skip oncologist visits as well out of fear of triggering memories of the experience, Chan said. Charles Raison, MD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconson-Madison, told MD Magazine that older studies done on cancer patients found that many of them turned to alcohol to deal with their stressors."


This made me wonder if the simple diagnosis of cancer is what could cause people to die from their cancer, and would they have survived, or lived for longer at least, had they not had the dreaded diagnosis? People link getting diagnosed with cancer as proof they have a limited time left to live, and it seems like it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

Oh yes, I have this. Just 6 months out. And the medical system was absolutely horrible and inhuman to me.