The Importance of Spiritual Reinforcement in Breast Cancer
What is Cancer?
Cancer is a crisis process. But at the same time, it can be a baht from the other side. During the illness, the individual may fall into a material and moral depression, and on the contrary, he may experience a group of spiritual awakenings by thinking “I made a mistake, I did not pay attention to myself”.
It requires a holistic approach. Because the individual is a bio-psycho-social being. Because the disease affects not only the person’s body, but also all areas of his life. Therefore, even if the treatment is terminated, we should treat it as a chronic disease that must be lived with.
Secondly, after going through such an experience, a person can find the opportunity to question the meaning of life, to think about what he wants to give importance to and what he wants to give up. They can decide for individual growth to transform something about themselves and their life. At this point, reinforcement is valuable.
Mental Problems Experienced by Cancer Patients
– When they first learn about the disease, they give a mental reaction. Multiple personality changes are seen.
– He can experience harmony difficulties.
– He attributes every complaint that he and those around him experience to the disease.
– Panic and fear disorder appear.
– The risk of becoming depressed increases when treatment begins.
Experiencing organ loss due to cancer exacerbates depression.
– In the treatment of advanced cancer, discontinuous short, medium and long-term brain syndrome may occur.
The person involved in this process
He may experience losses in keeping his body, health and life under control.
Due to his increasing dependence on others, he may have to face deteriorating stability in family, work and social life.
The person may experience confusion, concentration-time-space orientation and memory issues.
Physical Complaints: Depending on the treatment, pain, hair loss, mucositis, loss of appetite, nausea, skin problems, insomnia, eye problems, neurological problems, weakness, fatigue may occur.
Psychological Complaints: Anger, hopelessness, sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic tension disorder can be seen.
Social Complaints: Lack of social reinforcement, lack of social relations, social isolation.
The moment of diagnosis: It is a time when spiritual reinforcement is needed, as it can have a shocking-destructive effect on the patient. The patient experiences a process of shock and denial, most likely resulting from a negative and frightening perception of illness. First, complete bewilderment, and then disbelief that this kind of thing happened on its own. The first is the reactions that occur. Many symptoms such as Insomnia, trouble, depressive mood, unhappiness, loss of appetite, crying, introversion, and inability to speak, which are most common in the shock period, are the onset and precursors of mental distress.
- On the one hand, while making treatment decisions, on the other hand, the rising tension level is tried to be controlled.
- Medical factors: The patient’s ability to overcome the tension, the type of cancer-stage-location-symptoms-predicting future stages,
- Psychological Factors: The person’s ability to adapt to previous illnesses, physical and mental rehabilitation capacity, personality structure, capacity to cope with problems, age, gender, the meaning given to the illness by the person,
- Social Factors: Civilized state, education, cultural-religious attitude, whether there is an emotional basis, the effect of the health team
Interpretation: Humans often feel that life is under control. When there is a random situation that disrupts this feeling and emotion, the cosmic intentions of the individual are shaken. In such a case, it can fall into a mana void. In this case, the individual enters the process of striving to restore the universal meaning. This is where the mana generation cycle takes place.
Where does our need for interpretation arise? Due to his prestige by nature, human beings are trying to understand and evaluate everything to the extent of their mental capacity. The main motive that motivates this pursuit is getting rid of obscurity and closedness.
People want to understand and make sense of the events that happen to them or happen around them. As a result, people want to control their own life, to give direction to events, or at least to be able to assume what will happen.
As long as a person lives, he tries to internalize them in a way that will be beneficial to him by valuing the physical, mental and social formations. Man is not helpless against the rules that surround him. It has the potential to take a position relative to the current situation and the ability to change.
The individual who encounters a stressful situation or event first tries to understand what the problem is. In the first place, he looks at whether the problem is a danger or a threat to him. If the situation poses a danger or threat to him/herself, the individual seeks personal coping resources.
Most Common Psychiatric Problems in Cancer Patients
Regarding all the psychiatric issues listed below, there will definitely be positive aspects of the therapy supplement to be taken.
- Adjustment disorder: It has a rate of 48% among all psychiatric diagnoses. What is a dissonance disorder: When the symptoms intensify and begin to negatively affect the functionality and treatment of the person, it means that the mental structure is having trouble in providing harmony to the current stressor and dissonance occurs.
- Depression: It is the second most common disorder in psychiatric diagnoses after dissonance disorders. The incidence in individuals varies in a wide range such as 4.5-58%. One of the most valuable reasons that increase the risk of depression in patients is severe pain. When the gender factor is evaluated, it is seen that women are 2 times more depressed than men. The age of depression in women is generally 35-45, and in men it is mid-55-70. Effective psychotherapeutic treatment for depression has been found to influence the course of cancer. From a medical point of view, psychotherapy often helps relieve pain by reducing anxiety and depression in individuals.
- Anxiety Disorders: The incidence of anxiety ranges from 6 to 47% among individuals with cancer. A valuable point regarding anxiety is that anxiety often coexists in this disorder.
What causes anxiety or trouble?
Uncertainty about what will happen in the future
-feeling of inadequacy
– uncontrollable pain
– regrets about the past
– Being separated from relatives while lying in the hospital
-feeling of isolation from people
– feeling of loneliness
-lack of knowledge about the disease
– metabolic abnormalities (infection, low blood sugar)
-shortness of breath- insomnia
What happens as a result of anxiety?
-sadness
-intention to receive bad news,
-diarrhea-
mouth tenderness
-difficulty focusing
-insomnia
– irritability
If hallucination-severe agitation is added to these symptoms, if the perception of place and time is disturbed, if there are always feelings of doubt, delirium should be considered.
What Does a Social Basis Do?
- It acts as a buffer against stress.
- The person does not feel alone.
- The individual’s positive feelings such as Relation, Self/Loves Confidence, Self-Respect etc. are supported positively.
- It really strengthens the immune system.
- It makes it easier to adapt to changing conditions.
With effective psychotherapy, medical gloom is reduced, and often pain is alleviated, resulting in a reduction in symptoms and a lower cost of care, and positively affecting the course of the disease.
When cognitive reactivity begins in the core state, it jumps to the cognitive triad (worthlessness, hopelessness, helplessness). Chemotherapy and radiotherapy processes do not create a roughness to take a spiritual basis.
Conscious awareness about climbing processes, reduction of ruminations, metacognitions, that is, learning to control our ideas about our ideas. Reducing experiential avoidance can be reinforced by exposure, accepting experiences without judgment, regulating attention, and increasing bodily awareness.
