The emotional response to physical illness

THAT'S MEN:Recovering from the blow of a diagnosed illness is as much mind as it is matter – talking is a good way of easing the strain

WHEN I wrote about Tiger Woods before Christmas, I disappointed one reader when I took a sideswipe, as he put it, at “Holy Catholic Ireland”.

Firstly, though, I would like to mention some startling new evidence about the emotional response to physical disease.

A study of 170,000 Swedish men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer found an increased risk of suicide and of death from heart disease following diagnosis.

The risk appears to have been greatest in the first week after diagnosis.

Only a small number of men died in these ways following diagnosis, but the fact that the risk was elevated at all tells us that we need to pay attention to the psychological stress that accompanies bad news about health.

One researcher suggested that both heart disease and suicide are produced by extreme psychological stress and that this could account for the deaths of the men in question. The results of the study were published in the journal, PLoS Medicine.

Reducing your stress can save your life – and you can go a long way towards reducing your stress by sharing your feelings with others. As I’ve pointed out before in this column, the emotional and psychological consequences of illness can be stronger than we think.

An article in the Archives of General Psychiatrysuggests that as many as one-third of people who have a heart attack are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress syndrome.

This is characterised by over-alertness, fear, intrusive memories, nightmares and other symptoms. If it continues, it can damage the future health of the traumatised person.

Less dramatic – but still significant – figures were found in a UK study involving mostly men, published in the British Journal of Health Psychiatry.

It found that heart attack resulted in psychological trauma for about 16 per cent of people and another 18 per cent had some symptoms of such trauma.

People who cope with bad news by avoiding it or denying it tended to be the worst affected, regardless of the severity of the heart attack.

Where does all this leave us? Firstly, I think that doing the manly thing and shrugging off bad news could be dangerous for our medical and physical health.

When we are hit with bad news, we need to share our distress with someone else, whether that someone else is a friend, a relative, a GP or a counsellor.

If you know someone whose physical health has suffered seriously, be sure to take into account the possibility that they are suffering inside to a greater extent than they let on.

If they want to talk about that suffering, let them – don’t shut off communication with a “sure, won’t you outlive the lot of us”.

Finally, doctors need to take into account the mental health needs of patients who have suffered serious damage to their physical health. More and more doctors are doing so.

Back now to my pre-Christmas piece on Tiger Woods in which I wrote that “I don’t like the holier-than-thou brigade – I listened to enough of them when I was growing up in Holy Catholic Ireland and we all know how that played out”.

Reader Gerry Kane writes that “while a holier-than-thou attitude certainly pervaded Ireland in the past, it is by no means the first nor the last society (or religious culture) that will endure that failing.

“I still think it is a good thing to have a set of moral values to strive for.

“To fail to live up to them does not invalidate them . . . Yes, a sickening level of hypocrisy, sin, crime and evil has been revealed among the leaders of Catholicism in Ireland.

“They have lived in a corrupt system for so long they became blind to its faults; and it became so ingrained it was incapable of change without help from outside. That help, thank God, has now arrived.

“However, Catholicism itself has now become an easy target . . . I found your comment cheap and personally hurtful. I am disappointed.

“However, I can understand the passion that gives rise to it, especially in the moment.

“I, too, am a product of that past you mention. I have taken things – both good and bad – from it, and continue to work on them in the smithy of my own soul, with the help of God.”

Gerry Kane signs himself as a Catholic priest and I have edited his e-mail.

• Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas