From a treatment perspective, then, it becomes essential to change this attitude if one is interested in enhancing their health. Since it is impossible to emotionally experience pleasure and hopelessness at the same time, it becomes important to seriously look at pleasure as being an essential intervention in the treatment of cancer, and other illnesses as well. The diagnosis of cancer still evokes in many patients a sense of uncontrollability and inevitable death. Cancer is a disease whose medical results are accompanied by and sometimes dominated by the emotional reaction to the disease. The onset of the disease often bears no apparent relation to controllable factors, and the course of the disease can be very unpredictable.
Prolonged depression is a very frequent consequence of a cancer diagnosis.
Added to the special horror that such a diagnosis holds for many people is the additional fear of adverse reactions during treatment. The emotional consequences are but one of several factors that have motivated practitioners and researchers in psychology to propose utilizing psychological interventions with cancer patients. Certainly another factor is the potential role that stress plays in suppressing immune system response and increasing susceptibility to cancer. The continuing clarification of a cancer-prone psychological profile will also offer important insights as to the directions that intervention should take. Research in the area of stress and illness has emphasized that not only may absence of control be a component in the development of disease, but the reasserting of control may be an important ingredient in getting well.