Step 6: Integrative Medicine, CAM & Beyond

Individual Psychological and Emotional Support

Professional Support
Up to 40 percent of cancer patients experience clinically significant anxiety and depression; nine out of ten of them link their distress to diagnosis and treatment. Just as you get treated for physical symptoms on a regular basis, you need to do the same for the mental stress with which you're dealing. Whether you see a counselor, family therapist, clinical social worker, psycho-oncologist, psychiatrist or any other mental health professional, there is great value in talking about and addressing the unique emotional issues that arise with the diagnosis and treatment of your cancer. You will be able to vent all your fears and anxieties, concerns and worries to a sympathetic ear, a person who can help give you a vocabulary for expressing those concerns and a way to manage them.

Support groups
Being inclusive, one of the pillars of Dr. Porrath's philosophy of outwitting cancer, primarily involves family and friends. These people form the human net that protects you from hitting emotional rock bottom. And there is another group of people who also can provide support. You just don't know them. Yet. These potential new friends are members of cancer support groups that abound throughout the country. The groups can be found through local chapters of the ACS, through church groups, health care organizations, and on the Internet. Though these people may start as strangers, you will have something in common with them that creates a much stronger bond than you have with even your closest relatives. You will share the experience of having cancer. The empathy that bond creates will allow you to both give and receive emotional support. And as usual, the giving might be more fulfilling than the receiving.

Spiritual Practice
Everyone has their own definition of spirituality, their own religious ideology. Whether yours includes private prayer, attendance at a temple or church, communing with nature on walks in the woods, a belief in a Higher Power or simply that life has a higher purpose, NIMH research shows that some strong religious belief loosens the grip of depression and helps you cope with serious illnesses better.