Caregiver Distress in Cancer

Anshika Arora

A chapter in Suggestions for Addressing Clinical and Non-Clinical Issues in Palliative Care from IntechOpen

Abstract: Cancer is a chronic disease with associated physical, emotional, social, financial and spiritual problems. The primary caregiver takes care of all these cancer-related issues for the patient. In India, usually a family member or loved one is the caregiver of the patient. The caregivers themselves feel distress and many factors may be associated with their psychological well-being. Pattern of distress may vary according to phases of the disease like at diagnosis, during ongoing oncological treatment, recovery period, remission period, recurrence of cancer, during end of life care and bereavement. Identifying and understanding caregiver distress is the first step. Active listening and good communication is important to unearth the real concerns and fears in order to relieve the distress. This chapter covers components of caregiver distress, assessment, physical, psychosocial and spiritual factors associated with distress and its management. Lastly, some recent literature related to prevalence and factors associated with caregiver distress.

Keywords: caregiver distress; cancer; palliative care; psychological distress; good death (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/75824 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:226676

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.96386

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().