Depression in Cancer Patients Can Be Treated With Phone Support
Cancer patients undergo extensive treatment to deal with the physical aspects of their disease, including chemotherapy, radiation, and invasive surgery. However, one of the most overlooked symptoms cancer patients suffer – depression – often gets ignored and is rarely treated.
A new study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated that telephone care management was a viable option for treating depression as well as pain. Not only did it give cancer patients immediate access to specialists who could immediately address pain management issues, but it offered a social support to the cancer patient that helped alleviate symptoms of depression.
The treatment includes calls from an automated service that allowed patients to report pain and depression symptoms which could then be followed up on by the personal call made by a nurse or care manager.
According to the principal researcher, Dr. Kurt Kroenke, “Because oncologists are busy with testing, chemotherapy and other treatments, they often have too little time left for quality of life issues, like pain and depression. We felt one solution might be a partnership between a telephone-based symptom management team and community-based oncology practices.”
The research showed that those cancer patients who had received the depression management calls had “significantly improved symptoms of both depression and pain” regardless of what phase of cancer they were in.
“Technology, in the form of automated calls repeated until an adequate treatment response occurred, allowed us to gather data on symptom severity at a time convenient for the patient, making the process very patient-centered,” said Kroenke.
Because the nursing staff was able to personalize their follow up calls with the patients, they were able to focus more specifically on the quality of life issues affecting that particular patient, making a difference in how patients responded.
Shadra Bruce is a contributing writer for Mental Health News.