Demoralization syndrome: New insights in psychosocial cancer care

Demoralization is confirmed as a significant clinical dimension that needs to be part of the vision physicians should have when treating cancer patients. It is not a psychiatric disease but the expression of an unfolding, situational existence already involved in an irreducibly complex social world, in which cancer and its consequences as traumatic stressors impact the patient's experience and feelings, inducing a profound sense of emotional suffering. See also pages 2251–9, 2260–7.