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The Stigma of Cancer - Part 2 of 2
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By Alex Cukan
UPI Health Correspondent
Despite the frequent revelations from the Human Genome Project about our genes relating to illness, many people still persist in blaming people for getting sick, particularly when cancer is involved.
"There is still the feeling that something might be wrong with you if you're diagnosed with cancer," said Dr. Jimmie C. Holland, chief of psychiatric services at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
"There are behaviors such as smoking (or) a high-fat diet," Holland told UPI's Caregiving. "We know cervical cancer comes via a virus and the risk if higher for those with more sexual partners and sunburn contributes to skin cancer, but these are behaviors not attitudes or emotions."
The stigma of cancer goes back centuries and so does blaming the victim. Philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, for example, emphasized "individual weakness," and "lack of personal will" in such works as "The Will To Power."
In the 1970s, Dr. Lydia Temoshok, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, labeled those with cancer as a Type C personality — a person with a dramatic physical response to stress, yet who says he or she is not highly stressed.
"Temoshok posited that people with cancer have difficulty expressing their feelings and repress or internalize anger," Larry Lachman, a licensed clinical psychologist and cancer survivor, told Caregiving. This assumption "is tantamount to being ludicrous, since many cancer patients I know who are not assertive have beat their cancer and many who had no problem being assertive, or even raging, died rapidly."
Drs. Glenna Halvorson-Boyd, an oral cancer survivor, and Lisa K. Hunter, a malignant-melanoma survivor, co-authored "Dancing In Limbo," which said "right attitude" and "positive thinking" implies that the person with cancer, just by thinking differently, might cure the cancer.
"It also implies that the person with cancer may have caused their own illness by adopting a 'wrong attitude,' and engaging in 'negative thinking,'" Lachman said. "Halvorson-Boyd and Hunter say there is no scientific proof that thoughts or holding-in feelings or even stress can cause cancer — the typical New Age view that they can is an 'oversimplification.'"
Psychological stress has been suggested to bring on cancer or shorten its survival rate, but Danish researchers found no link between cancer and the loss of a child, considered one of the most stressful things any person can endure, Holland said.
The researchers examined 21,062 parents who lost a child in Denmark from 1980 to 1996 and, among them, 1,630 parents with cancer. They found no substantial correlation between the death of a child and cancer survival.
Lachman, author of "Parallel Journeys — A Spirited Approach to Coping and Living with Cancer," who has treated the chronically or terminally ill suggests:
- Give yourself permission to be "attended to" by friends and family.
- Ask for medications to help reduce or eliminate any psychologically debilitating side effects from cancer treatment.
- Join a support group or therapy group made up of others experiencing the same journey.
- Prioritize what is important and do only those things.
- Practice complementary healing techniques such as yoga, meditation, progressive relaxation or therapeutic massage.
- Pace yourself. When tired, rest without guilt.
- Use assertive "I statements" to ask for what you want from the treatment team, family and friends.
- Grieve the many losses that accompany being diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening disease.
"I think the bottom line is, we should respect the way each person copes with illness and if (U.S. Supreme Court) Chief Justice (William H.) Rehnquist chooses to cope amide criticisms — all the power to him — maybe he copes by working," Holland said.
Justice Rehnquist is being treated for thyroid cancer.
"There is not one way to cope with cancer," Holland added. "We surely all cope differently and we should respect how a person chooses to cope."
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