A large majority of women along with breast cancer produce symptoms of post-traumatic tension disorder (PTSD) within the initial couple of months after diagnosis, according to a brand-new study led by researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich, Germany.
The findings show that receiving a breast cancer diagnosis frequently has actually a more powerful psychological impact compared to experiencing various other types of serious trauma, such as a severe accident or a violent assault. Over half of the breast cancer patients in the study still endured from at the very least one symptom of PTSD one year after diagnosis.
“That the higher degree of tension need to persist for such a long time is particularly striking,” said lead researcher Dr. Kerstin Hermelink of the Breast Cancer Focus in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the LMU Medical Center.
“Indeed, the severity of the psychological and emotional impact of the cancer diagnosis is underlined by yet another result reported in the study. Once patients that had currently had a traumatic experience, such as a severe accident or a violent assault, prior to the progress of malignancy, some 40 percent of them rated having breast cancer as the a lot more serious traumatic event.”
For the study, the researchers studied a group of 166 patients newly diagnosed along with breast cancer. Over the road of the complying with year, the participants were evaluated at 3 personal time-points for the presence of clinically considerable symptoms of PTSD. The findings were after that compared to a regulate group of healthy and balanced patients.
During the time period in between the cancer diagnosis and the initiation of treatment, 82.5 percent of every one of patients were discovered to exhibit symptoms of PTSD. These included recurrent and intrusive reminders of the experiences associated along with cancer, sensations of detachment and emotional numbness, increased arousal, sudden outbursts of anger, and an exaggerated startle response.
Although a complete diagnosis of PTSD was discovered in just two percent of patients one year after the cancer diagnosis, 57.3 percent of the patients continued to display one or a lot more PTSD symptoms at that point. In contrast, the fee of PTSD symptoms because of various other traumatic events was quite reduced in the controls and the patients alike.
The researchers set out to identify factors that could account for the varying incidence and duration of symptoms of PTSD among the study patients. While the sort of cancer treatment did not make considerably of a distinction concerning PTSD symptoms, the researchers discovered that education levels did.
“Neither the sort of surgery nor receipt of chemotherapy had any sort of considerable effect on either of these variables, however a higher degree of education did have actually a good impact. A university education is evidently a marker for resources that allow patients to recover a lot more swiftly from the psychological stresses associated along with a diagnosis of breast cancer,” Hermelink said.
Furthermore, just patients that were without metastatic disease, and could therefore chance to grab completely cured, were recruited in to the study. Women that had a history of psychiatric health problem were excluded as well.
“Indeed, we assume that the study is most likely to somewhat underestimate the real incidence of post-traumatic tension symptoms in breast cancer patients,” Hermelink said.
The findings are published in the diary Psycho-Oncology.
Source: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet
Woman along with PTSD photo by shutterstock.