Furthermore, expressing negative emotions allows patients to feel more joy. You develop a battlefield humor. When you have a good cry, you have a good laugh afterwards. Many cancer patients think their bodies are betraying them. It's unsurprising that people have a normal sadness when they have a cancer diagnosis, yet it's often not handled well, or not recognized.
Many studies show that emotional problems go hand in hand with physical illness.
And some form of depression or other emotional illness appears in anywhere from 4.5 percent to 50 percent of cancer patients, depending on whose research you believe. This is not to say that depressed patients get cancer, but rather that cancer patients get depressed, which in turn increases the likelihood of pain and disability. It's a feedback mechanism that degrades both mental and physical health, Spiegel says. Although depression and other psychiatric disorders may amplify pain, it is likely that persistent pain contributes to depression.