Melanie J. Barton
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
Many cancer patients experience anxiety sometimes due to the cancer diagnosis, sometimes prior to the diagnosis for reasons not related to the illness.
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
Many cancer patients experience anxiety sometimes due to the cancer diagnosis, sometimes prior to the diagnosis for reasons not related to the illness.
Different factors can contribute to the development of anxiety including: fear of what may happen in the future, side effects of medication or pain, past episodes of anxiety related to stressful events, lack of accurate knowledge of the risks of the disease, or untrained healthcare providers failing to notice or accurately detect or treat anxiety. DSM-IV-TR (2004) diagnosis of a medical related anxiety does not address the severity of the problem, the initiating cause of problem, the categories of the disorder, or co-morbidity factors. Education and communication is needed between patients and healthcare providers to adequately provide resources to lessen the development of the disorder and to properly treat it once it develops.
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