Laura Taylor
November 1, 2014
Professor Maruska
English 103-Composition

Cancer Survival
Serious illness brings change to the lives of the patient as well as the lives of their friends and family. Cancer affects a patient’s self-esteem and happiness. Without help to control the hard times, a patient will struggle to find hope and strength to keep them in a positive outlook. A patient’s cancer type reflects on how serious a patient’s emotional and physiological health is. According to the International Association for the Study of Pain, “Worldwide, 7.6 million people die from cancer worldwide each year.” Cancer now accounts for more deaths worldwide than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined according to World Cancer Day 2014 statistics (Ford). Cancer places pressure and changes the mindsets of the patient and their family and friends, physically and emotionally. When dealing with challenges, an optimistic person would normally look at what they can do to fix the problem. Instead of giving up hope, optimistic people are willing to ask others for help. Psychologists say that positive thinking such as patients believing in their abilities, setting a positive approach to challenges, and trying to make the most of bad situations is the best way to stay healthy. Although some scientists report that a positive outlook doesn’t prolong survival and instead improves quality of life, in reality cancer survival rates increase through psychotherapy; by preforming different strategies and tools, muscle relaxation techniques and relieving chronic depression.
Psychotherapy alleviates psychological distress through talking. This is beneficial to a patient because cancer treatments are harsh and painful on the body. Even though drug treatments show recovery it’s harsh, scary and painful experience unlike psychotherapy (Richardson). The majority of psychiatrists say that psychotherapy is a crucial part of mental and physical health treatment. Psychotherapy is the major component to any success of treatment with medication to cure cancer. According to Med Lexicon’s medical dictionary, psychotherapy is a treatment of emotional, behavioral, personality, and psychiatric disorders. This is based primarily on verbal or nonverbal communication and interventions with the patient instead of using chemical and physical measures (Mathias). Psychotherapy allows doctors to see improvement over time and then doctors can put into account what does and does not work. This benefits the doctor so they can then plan ways to make certain aspects better as a patient processes.
Muscle Relaxation is a release-only relaxation that focuses on relieving feelings of tension in the muscles. Eliminating the initial use of muscle tensing in muscles is successful. This is practiced in progressive relaxation also, but focusing instead solely on muscle relaxation. Release-only relaxation is recommended as the next step in relaxation therapy. This is also to be used after progressive relaxation has been mastered. When a patient preforms progressive relaxation the patient lays or sits in a comfortable position. Starting by tensing the first muscle in a group of muscles is the point of this technique. This is beneficial to the patient because it allows it to naturally work to fight off the cancer. The reason why harsh drugs are used is because patient’s bodies are not relaxed and working properly to cure a patient naturally. The patient has success by holding the tension for approximately five seconds, and then it is released. This is in an effort to relax the patient for up to 30 seconds (Richardson). This then allows the body to focus on the feeling of the muscles and the presence of tension. Different Muscle relaxation techniques are used to take patients minds away and allow their muscles and functions of their body to calm down and work more effectively (Mathias). Patients perform a deep breathing excise by focusing on not using chest breathing. Chest breathing