EDITORIAL
An Overview of the International Literature on Health-Related Quality of Life, Mental Health and Psychosocial Issues in People with Cancer
Jutta Lindert1, Federica Sancassiani2, *, Elena Massa2, Antonio Egidio Nardi3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2021Volume: 17
Issue: Suppl-1, M1
First Page: 253
Last Page: 256
Publisher ID: CPEMH-17-253
DOI: 10.2174/1745017902117010253
Article History:
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2021Collection year: 2021
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Editorial
Background:
Cancer is one of the most important leading causes of death worldwide. Early detection, screening and diagnosis have been demonstrated to significantly improve patients’ survival rates and increase awareness of the benefit of prompt therapies and healthy lifestyles. In this context, Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) and several psychosocial difficulties are of relevance as prognostic factors for the trajectory of the diseases of people living with cancer.
Methods:
This Special Issue aims to present a set of systematic reviews and research studies focusing on several psychosocial aspects in people suffering from hematologic and solid cancer.
Results:
Three systematic reviews regard HRQoL, the quality of patient-physician communication, depression and other stress-related difficulties, respectively. One review pointed out the difficulties in diagnosing depression in the elderly with solid cancer; another one regards the risk of cancer in severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and severe depressive disorders. One additional review regards HRQoL in people with cancer in the present era of COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, some research studies pointed out the usefulness of a validated instrument to assess satisfaction with care in the oncology field, as well as of the self-reinforcing feedback loop to improve fatigue, insomnia and depression in people with cancer. Other two research studies evaluate, respectively, the attributable burden in worsening HRQoL in people suffering both from cancer and depression and the Type D personality as a risk factor for stress-related difficulties in women with breast cancer.
Conclusion:
This Special Issue is a contribution to enhance future research mainly about such interventions useful to assess and improve HRQoL and overall well-being in people with cancer.
