Psycho-oncology Counselling and Psychotherapy for cancer patients

With advances in medicine, the survival rates of cancer patients are constantly increasing, making them one of the largest groups of chronically ill patients. This fact creates the need for psychosocial care for these people, due to the nature of the disease and the changes it can cause to the body and the psyche.

What are the effects of cancer on the patient's psyche?

Both at diagnosis and during the course of treatment, the patient is confronted with a range of emotions, including anxiety, tension, worry, fear, sadness. These emotions, if not analysed and deconstructed, but instead repressed or suppressed, may even affect the course of treatment, due to the patient's overloaded mental sphere. Besides, when the patient works more effectively with his or her soul, then the treating physician also finds fertile ground to work better with the sufferer's body.

What is psycho-oncology?

Psycho-oncology is a field of psychology that provides counselling and psychotherapy services to cancer patients, their relatives and nursing staff working in oncology units.The main aim of mental health specialists working in psycho-oncology is to provide information and counselling on the relationship between cancer and the emotions involved.

Benefits of psycho-oncology
How does it help the cancer patient?

One of the goals of psycho-oncology is the adoption of a dynamic and fighting spirit on the part of the patient. Many studies support and prove that those who display an active attitude and action have a better prognosis and receive better treatment. Therefore, after a prior familiarization with negative emotions and how to deal with them, we try to make the patient an active member of the course and treatment, encouraging him/her to regroup and not be uninvolved in what is happening to him/her.

What are we doing from our side as mental health professionals?

• We are called upon to show empathy, to perceive and understand the patient's distress and reactions. The patient seeks certainty, security and peace of mind, which we have to show throughout the entire psychotherapeutic intervention.
  
• We are called upon to be honest and honest with the patient, because a relationship based on trust and mutual respect will certainly be to the patient's benefit. Thus, the will of the patient to fight is strengthened, while a note of of determination and optimism to the whole process.
  
• We approach the patient as a person whom we respect and whose feelings are worth understanding. That is, we do not look at them in a purely biomedical way and do not consider them as a set of organs and biological functions that need adjustment or repair.

Cancer sufferers are decent and respectable people, who often reach and exceed limits that some healthy people cannot even imagine.

After all, as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said,

"The most beautiful people are those who have known agony, defeat, pain, loss and have managed to find their way through the deep darkness."

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