Distress Screening and Management

Table of Contents What Is Cancer-Related Distress? Guidelines Screening Management

Learning Objectives Understand cancer-related distress, including incidence, risk factors, and repercussions of untreated distress Describe the current guidelines for identifying and managing cancer-related distress Emphasize importance of screening for cancer-related distress and the associated improved cancer care outcomes Identify tools to screen and assess distress Understand the advanced practitioner’s role in assessing and managing patients’ cancer-related distress

What Is Cancer-Related Distress?

Defining Distress Distress  destresse  districtus NCCN definition Distress is multifactorial Distress occurs on a continuum Distress is an unpleasant experience The word “distress” comes from the French word destresse, which means circumstance that causes anxiety or hardship, and from the Latin word districtus, which means draw apart, hinder, compel, coerce. As we use it in English today, it is a noun meaning great pain, anxiety, or sorrow, and physical or mental suffering; a verb meaning to afflict; and an adjective, meaning afflicted with or suffering distress. The most widely used definition of distress in cancer comes from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines for Distress Management. “Distress is a multifactorial unpleasant experience of a psychological (i.e., cognitive, behavioral, emotional), social, spiritual, and/or physical nature that may interfere with the ability to cope effectively with cancer, its physical symptoms, and its treatment. Distress extends along a continuum, ranging from common normal feelings of vulnerability, sadness, and fears to problems that can become disabling, such as depression, anxiety, panic, social isolation, and existential and spiritual crisis.” NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines. (2018). Distress Management V.2.2018. Retrieved from: https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/distress.pdf.