He may also be humiliated by his having the disease or may be avoided by others who do not know how to approach the patient or are discomfited by doing so, particularly since cancer indicates mortality and mortality is one aspect of life's facts that individuals generally like to avoid.

Other feelings of inferiority and shame are caused by loss of autonomy and independence, vulnerability, and mutilation and most frightening of all is the fear of death. Clinical depression can easily become an outcome.

Some may also experience psychiatric disorder as a result, with the Psychological Collaborative Oncology Group finding that 47% of patients who had been diagnosed with cancer fell into psychiatric disorder with two thirds having depressed or anxious moods whilst one third experienced major depression, delirium, anxiety disorder, or some other major mental illness (Sandoval-Cros, 1999)

Methods to lessen physical and psychological effects.

The three most common...
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