Cancer is undoubtedly a huge issue today, since about 41% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer (United Press International). However, not many are talking about the significance of mental health for the victims. Each year 12.7 million people are diagnosed and 7.6 million will perish annually from the disease (UPI). Each year, millions of people perish from the disease, and about 25% of them with severe mental illness (National Cancer Institute). The treatment for this disease causes fogginess-depression, anger and many other emotions whose symptoms are often overlooked. Though cancer is not always terminal, it can dramatically affect the mental state of the victim and their loved ones. More should be done to emotionally support cancer …show more content…
A longer life, rather than a shorter, happier life, doesn’t always mean a better life.
Cancer treatment induces a distorted mental state whose symptoms is commonly called, “chemo brain.” Chemo brain is known for chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment or dysfunction. After an MRI of cancer patients brain post chemo, there was a serious decline in brain activity. A few examples of “chemo brain” include memory lapses, trouble concentrating, trouble remembering things, trouble multi-tasking, taking long amounts of time to complete simple tasks, and trouble remembering common words (Hughes). And because brain problems are hard to study and pinpoint the cause of, the symptoms go untreated.
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Cancer patients lose the ability to be independent and to do simple tasks that they could once do with ease. These people need help going grocery shopping, cleaning, driving, fixing meals, etc. As 35-year-old ovarian cancer survivor Alli Ward states, “This transition from self-sufficiency to dependency was extremely difficult, and it took an emotional toll. After working for years to cultivate independence and self-sufficiency, I felt like a failure” (Ward). Like most cancer patients, she had a very hard time dealing with the loss of her independence and needed to deal with and grieve this loss. Many cancer patients, like Alli, feel like less of a person when the disease strikes. They feel their self worth is lowered, dramatically altering their self image and how they perceive others. This broken image of ourselves is just another reason why more mental health care should be required for cancer patients. People like Alli are left struggling to adjust to the loss of their independence and who they were. Cancer patients are treated more like lab rats and subjects than people. In addition to the incomplete treatment of these people, they feel uncomfortable and embarrassed to seek out mental health care. We have stigmatized mental health to be a sign of weakness and as unimportant. Mental health care is a huge component of one 's health and we need to work together as a culture to undo this misconception. If someone
Although medical social workers have always played a role in helping loved ones adjust to significant illness in a family member and in securing needed resources to pay for medical care (Furstenberg & Olson, 1984), a new role for mental health professionals in the care of those afflicted with disease has emerged. D...
She’s been struggling everyday of her life for the past 10 years; battling and fighting this horrible disease has made it hard on her and her family. The cancer has now metastasized, making it difficult for her to take care of everyday responsibilities and participate in daily activities. Her 13-year-old daughter is watching as her mother suffers and becomes brittle and weak.
Isn’t it overwhelming to consider the fact that approximately one in eight deaths in the world are due to cancer? To make this more comprehensible, the number of deaths caused by cancer is greater than caused by AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Along with the idea that this disease does not have a definite cure is a mind-staggering concept to grasp. If not caught in time, cancer means guaranteed death. These types of thoughts were floating around my head when my mother had told me that my father had mouth cancer.
The leading cause of death in America is lung cancer. Lung cancer is ranked top 10 fatal cancers in the United States. There are many types of ways to get lung cancer. There is radon gas it occurs outdoors naturally. Then there is second hand smoke that comes from other people smoking. People are even getting lung cancer from cancer causing agents, this happens from carcinogens. You can also get it from air pollution indoors and outdoors. Also there are gene-mutations that form cancer causing cells. Then there is the one everyone blamed lung cancer is smoking.
Considering wealthy people in the United States can afford better health care it should be no surprise that they live, “on average over eleven years longer than their poorer counterparts.” (GARCIA) Now in America, the place where everyone is supposed to be equal, we let the rich buy longer lives than the
Mental Health is a controversial topic among many ethnic and cultural groups all over the world. Some choose to ignore it altogether, leave it alone or consider it taboo, whereas others choose to make it important to focus on in their communities or families, since it is very important towards the growth of the body and self. It is up to the individual, regardless, to get help and assistance for any of their problems if they prevail and affect your everyday life. Self-esteem, anger, depression and stress are all very real things that we experience every day within our lives, or that we have all experienced ourselves at one point of time. To those who do not have any mental health problems or choose to ignore
Cancer patients often wonder if going through treatments like chemotherapy and radiation are worth the risk of the side effects, in addition to the cancerous side effects. They feel that they can’t enjoy or relax in what a short amount of time they have left because they are bedridden from the nausea and pain that treatments put them through. Patients tell their loved ones to just let them die so long as they don’t have to go through any more pain. Those who are too old, are unable to recover from the effects, or are just too far in the grips of cancer, should refuse the more harsh treatments like chemo and radiation. On the positive side, refusing treatments after a certain point can save their families from the stress and cost of hospital bills. If caught early enough, patients can opt for safer and easier routes to getting rid of cancer like surgery or by doing a stem cell transplant.
Cancer is a really bad and deadly disease and has caused many deaths around the world, but what if it isn't much of a disease but instead a business, so on the off chance that you had a business offering something that made you well over a hundred billion dollars for every year, would you find a way to kill the requirement for your business? Or, on the other hand, would you bend backwards for cash to keep coming?Cancer is a really bad and deadly disease and has caused many deaths around the world, but what if it isn't much of a disease but instead a business. from food to medicine cancer-causing things are everywhere and put there on purpose for profit. The government has many pros of this too , they make money and thin the population.I just think it's terrible that people could be so selfish and then take lives for money and go to sleep at night. Most people are skeptical when people claim this ,but proof is everywhere and be careful so you don't become a part of the biggest business in the US.
Obstructions such as tumors can interrupt normal brain activity, leading to deficits of normal reasoning, motor control, or consciousness. Many of the signs of neural damage are easily recognizable by an outside observer, but since the actual cause of these problems are internal, the symptoms can be vague. The real deficits can affect the brain’s anatomy, or the way signals are processed. A physician can only determine the real cause by examining the brain internally to find irregularities, either in structure or in functioning.
Mental Health is an issue that millions of individuals are facing here in the United States. Illnesses such as anxiety and panic attacks, borderline personality disorder, drug and alcohol addiction, and depression affect the lives of so many.
An estimated 61.5 million American Lives, or one in four, suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year, and it takes a decade, on average for them to make contact with a health care professional (Pending). One in 17 Americans currently live with chronic mental illness disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder (pending). Despite the new discoveries and advances in science and technology, the social stigma of mental illness prevails. Why is mental illness an issue? Why should healthy people be concerned if their neighbor suffers from acute depression? Those are the questions that the average American faces. Yet, our society remains naïve when it comes to mental health. The roots of this issue are found in the lack of information and lack of mental health accessibility.
The topic that I will be focusing on for this assignment is on the screening of lung cancer, since this is one of the most controversial debates all across the world. The significance of this topic is that when it comes to lung cancer screening, many individuals may or may not abide by it. There are many reasons to why individuals may not want to have their screening done for lung cancer. The top two reasons are that the screening itself is expensive and secondly, the results that they get from the screening may not be accurate. Imagine, if the results came up as a positive, for the ones who really do not have lung cancer, the amount of pain, time and money that they have put into the curing of lung cancer, is painful. At the same, time it is not fair for them to go through this much, when they actually do not have lung cancer. In this paper, I will discuss how lung cancer screening is a controversial issue and why it impacts us as a society and what problems that the family members, friends and medical doctors have to face if something does goes wrong.. Here is a portion of my essay that will appear on the final copy of my essay.
Mental disorders are rapidly becoming more common with each new generation born in the world. Currently, nearly one in two people suffer from some form of depression, anxiety, or other mental health problem at some point in their lives (Editor). With so many people suffering from their mental illnesses, steps have been taken in order to get help needed for these people but progress has been slow. In the medical world, hospitals are treating those with physical problems with more care than those with mental problems. Prescription drugs can only do so much helping the mentally ill go through their daily lives and more should be done to help those who need more than medicine to cope with their illness. Mental health should be considered just as important as physical health because of how advanced physical healing is, how the public reacts to those with mental illness, and due to the consequences that could happen if the illness is not correctly helped.
Mental illnesses are plaguing the world. Because mental illnesses are not seen, society often writes of depression and anxiety as something that is not real. Mental illnesses are complicated and take a while to understand and diagnose. Mental illnesses need to be recognized at a young age in order to be able to treat them. When someone is asked to go out but the person is sick, it is immediately ok and the person will understand. But when a person says they feel down or mentally unfit, they shake their head at them, claiming they just needed an excuse There is such a stigma surrounding mental disorders. People with depression and anxiety often won’t speak out because they are afraid of being judged. People don’t take mental illnesses seriously.
One of the biggest problems that people are faced with on a day-to-day basis is cigarette smoke. The sole cause for 480,000 deaths each year just in the United States is accredit to cigarettes(CDC). For a lot of the smokers the habit of smoking happens to assist them when under stress and dealing with issues that are unmanageable. Some smoke to appeal to their peers or simply because it “feels good.” Smoking one cigarette can lead to a major addiction. The effects of smoking hurt oneself and those amongst us. Smoking Kills as the ad portrays this revolver and cigarettes as the bullets, and also lists the side effects of smoking. Cigarettes causes cancer, increases the risk of you getting a stroke, highly addictive and causes a lot of health problems. Nearly 16