By Kemal Atlay, Australian Doctor
A new advertising campaign is looking for a fair go for those diagnosed with lung cancer.
Lung Foundation Australia says its campaign, which launches today, is designed to challenge misconceptions associated with lung cancer and to urge more empathy.
About half of lung cancer patients live with distress, anxiety and/or depression, and are four times more likely to take their own lives than the general population, the charity says.
This tied to community attitudes towards the disease, it says: more than one-third of Australians believe that people with lung cancer are “their own worst enemy” who “have only themselves to blame”.
Furthermore, the first question almost 40% of Australians ask patients is whether they smoked.
Professor Christine Jenkins, chair of the Lung Foundation and a thoracic physician at Concord Hospital in Sydney, says misinformation and stigma have a “devastating” impact on funding, research and support for people living with lung cancer.
“We need to throw out these prejudices and ensure we are acknowledging and supporting people with lung disease,” she says.
“Discrimination and stigma work against achieving good outcomes because people delay seeking help and feel ashamed of their diagnosis.”
Compared with the other major cancers, including breast and prostate, rates of anxiety and depression are 30% higher in patients with lung cancer.
The launch of the campaign comes as a US study shows that cancer patients have a fourfold risk of suicide compared with the general population.
The researchers, led by radiation oncologist Dr Nicholas Zaorsky from the Penn State Cancer Institute in Pennsylvania, drew on data from more than 8.6 million patients diagnosed with cancer between 1973 and 2014.
They found that more than 13,000 of these patients (0.15%) died by suicide — more than four times the rate of those without cancer.
White males, those diagnosed at a younger age, and patients with cancer of the lung, head and neck, testes or Hodgkin lymphoma were at particular risk of suicide.
“Distress and depression can arise from cancer diagnosis, treatment, financial stress and other causes. Ultimately, distress and depression may lead to suicide,” Dr Zaorsky said.
