Psychological disturbances in oncology patients: A systematic review of effective treatments

Abstract

Studies have shown that psychological care has to do with a variety of interventions that help patients with various diseases including cancer to make meaning out of life as well as influence their decision and manage the worst of symptoms as this could also reduce mortality. In recent times, psychological intervention is becoming the order of the day as most of the issues related to disease could not be handled by medical doctors alone. Unfortunately, assessing or reviewing some of these interventions that psychologists use particularly among cancer patients is lacking in the literature. It is against this background that this study was borne out to systematically review some of the therapeutic interventions among cancer patients. A total of 68 studies were searched through different search engines on studies conducted across years. Findings showed that therapeutic interventions are diverse including cognitive behavioral therapy, meaning enhancing, dignity, life review, narrative, counseling, education, music, writing among others are some of the therapeutic interventions that clinical psychologists used in intervening in cancer patients and it is, without doubt, to mention that some of them prove to be more effective than other as seen in meaning-centered and use of communication skills. It is concluded therefore that medicine and oncological treatments should not be done without psychological interventions as they have over time proven to assist in the treatment of cancer patients to improve their level of life meaning and quality of life thereby reducing their mortality rate.