Does diagnosis and treatment of cancer leave many people
suffering from PTSD? Cancer is routinely portrayed as a
psychological trauma in the media. Dramatizing it as traumatic
is a standard way of introducing psychological studies of
cancer. A diagnosis of cancer can be life-altering, but the
assumption that it typically proves to be traumatic does not
survive a confrontation with available evidence. Moreover, the
casual assumption that cancer is traumatic has been used to turn
patients’ normal reactions to a diagnosis into a mental health
issue, frighten persons who suffer from cancer, and promote
bogus therapies. It has been used to prescribe how cancer
patients should react to their disease, not just describe their
reactions. The invention of cancer as psychological trauma It
may come as a surprise that the connection between cancer and
psychological trauma only appeared in the scientific literature
around 1990. A search of “cancer” AND “(psychological trauma or
PTSD)” on Thomson Reuters Web of Science can