One of our team (RJW) is an author on this paper. He and his colleagues invited prostate cancer patients to fill in an online questionnaire on their mood in relation to the prostate cancer treatments they had received. Their results showed that compared to patients not on ADT, ADT does indeed negatively affect the mood of men, most notably increasing their sense of fatigue and decreasing their sense of vigor.
The authors also asked partners of patients to rate the patients’ moods. The partners reported similar declines in the patient’s mood that the patients reported, but to a greater degree than the patients themselves. Often our partners know us better than we know ourselves.
Van Dam D, Wassersug RJ, Hamilton LD. Androgen deprivation therapy’s impact on the mood of prostate cancer patients as perceived by patients and the partners of patients. Psycho-Oncology 2015; [epub ahead of print] 31 August 2015. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26332203