title: [Cancer Survivorship: the patient and medical care staff - how will society deal with cancer ?].
abstract: Instead of being preoccupied with treatment effectiveness, rates of survival, and asking how much longer will I live?, let us think in terms of how will I live my life the way I want to live it? In recent years, a new way of thinking called Cancer Survivorship has emerged in the United States, and has been drawing attention in Japan. Cancer Survivorship is a concept developed by a cancer patient support group in the United States in 1986, focusing on the experience of living with, through, and beyond cancer. Opposing society's narrow view of cancer patients as victims handed out a death sentence, Cancer Survivorship focuses on living life to the fullest from the time of cancer diagnosis until the moment of death,and works as a movement appealing to society to allow cancer survivors the right to live as they wish. This way of thinking has spread globally, and in Italy, a movement aimed at protecting cancer survivors' freedom to do paid work has unfolded. Even in Japan, with an increase in the number of cancer patients and an improved five-year survival rate, patient support groups have been emerging with the Cancer Survivorship mentality. However, Japanese society still has not given the movement sufficient recognition, and the question now is if cancer patients, even those in the terminal stage, can seize their lives and be someone who lives in the present.
authors.affiliation: Social Security News Department, The Yomiuri Shimbun.
authors.forename: Mayumi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Honda
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008503:Medical Staff; D009369:Neoplasms; D010361:Patients; D011788:Quality of Life; D015996:Survival Rate