Amazon.com Review
David Spiegel, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford whose work has revolved around mobilizing victims of life-threatening illnesses, offers detailed instruction for taking charge of affliction and living beyond limits. In a landmark study, Spiegel found that women with breast cancer who received standard medical care and met with a weekly support group experienced less depression, anxiety and pain, and lived twice as long as women who received no social support. Here he expands his findings to include all terminal illnesses from first diagnoses, through treatment, to the threat of impending death, and explains how facing fear head-on makes victims freer in the time they have left.
From Library Journal
Basing his conclusions on scientific research and clinical experience, the author discusses the connection between one's mental life and physical health. In his own study of women with advanced breast cancer who attended group therapy, Spiegel found that those who received group support were not only emotionally better off than the control group but on average survived twice as long. In contrast to those who advocate such approaches as visualizing away one's disease, the author makes no claim to cure illness. Rather, he aims at having patients improve the quality of their lives by acknowledging the seriousness of their illness. The author's single deviation in an otherwise interesting and useful book is his needlessly emotional outburst against suicide. For large academic and public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/93.
- Bonnie Hoffman, Stony Brook, N.Y.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
