Pattern of distress among cancer patients assessed during new patient counseling: A cross-sectional study

Distress is an unpleasant emotional feeling of uneasiness, sadness, worry, anger, helplessness, or guilt and is considered as the sixth vital sign of cancer. Understanding and managing distress at an early stage helps the patient to deal with cancer in a better way. The objective of the study is to estimate the pattern of distress among cancer patients assessed during new patient counseling and its association with demographic factors.

This is a cross-sectional retrospective study conducted by reviewing the case record forms of patients for a period of 4 months. The study included cancer patients between the age of 18 and 75 who attended new patient counseling and reported a score on the NCCN distress thermometer. Those with incomplete information and history of known psychiatric or neurological disorders were excluded.

Among the 348 patients, 39.9% had a distress score of 4 or above, which is clinically significant distress. Nearly 75% of them reported that their distress has a psycho-social reason, and 25% reported that distress is due to physical reasons. Analysis of the association of gender and age with clinically significant distress revealed that women and younger age groups had higher distress. In our study, Christians had a higher association with clinically significant distress.

More than one-third of the patients reported to have clinically significant distress. This emphasizes the key role of distress screening and new patient counseling in an oncology setting. This also stresses the need for a psychotherapeutic approach in managing psycho-social concerns of cancer patients.