I have just read another of those articles in a medical journal that stated that psychological interventions do not affect survival in cancer patients. However what the article was really saying that on the existing evidence the studies they reviewed have not shown, to the satisfaction of the statisticians that there was enough evidence that psychological interventions affect survival.
To be strictly accurate the authors should have acknowledged a lack of evidence and not said that psychological interventions did not affect survival. Despite their good intentions the authors fell into the well known scientific mistake of stating that absence of evidence is the same as evidence of absence. Just because they do not have the evidence from randomized controlled trials does not mean that psychological interventions cannot affect longevity.
And just because some interventions did not work does not preclude the possibility that others might do so. Whether an intervention works depends very much on whether that particular intervention is any good and whether the measurement scales actually pick up useful changes. There is now considerable evidence that despite claims such as in that article that psycho-social aspects of a person's makeup can and do affect their survival.
This paper reminded once again of another article written by a high profile oncologist who seemed to have a hobby of debunking the idea that the patient could do anything to improve their disease outcomes.
One of his articles attempted to "prove" that psycho-social issues (that is psychological and social aspects of the patient) had no impact on outcomes. I was appalled that he seemed to expect that four simplistic, once administered questionnaires could tell him anything useful that could be generalized to the world population. The particular questionnaires he selected to use were a very poor choice and showed he really had no idea of the literature surrounding good outcomes. Having shown that these questionnaires gave no useful results he then made the huge claim that differences in people, how they felt and what they did, had no impact on how long they lived.
This oncologist was one of the key influencers of colleagues and I frequently saw his paper being quoted by those who wanted to deny that there was any interaction between mind and body in physical disease.
Despite a huge increase in medical research papers published over the last couple of decades there are still too many medical practitioners who would want to deny that a person with cancer can make any difference to their outcomes. Many doctors just do not stay up to date with current research.
Strong positive emotions might not have been proven to the medical profession as being important to recovery, but then such positive emotions are impossible to explore scientifically in randomized controlled trials. Therefore their possible contribution is ignored. However you do not need permission or approval from your doctor to undertake good self care. So set out to explore all of those personal, psychological and social activities that you really enjoy.
Dr Harriet Denz-Penhey is an internationally recognized health researcher who has done groundbreaking research into patient self care in serious illness. The web site http://www.cancerremedies.org discusses aspects of natural cancer treatment and remedies for good general health.
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