Addressing Mental Health Impacts in Cancer Patients and Survivors at Federally Qualified Health Centers
Keywords:
Hodgkin's lymphoma, cancer, mental healthAbstract
I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma on October 9th, 2020, as a senior in college during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. My brush with cancer held the mirror of my mortality to my face which induced a level of clarity that transformed the course of my life. I now live a life that is committed to integrating health justice at individual, local, and systemic levels.
Over the course of my time in chemotherapy, radiation, and remission I was privileged to have ample resources to address my immediate physical health. However, I lacked sufficient tools to address the acute and long-term effects cancer had on my mental health. I noticed there were gaps in care to detect and integrate mental health services into the cancer patient experience and long-term recovery. Therefore, after college, when I started my first full-time job, I was determined to incorporate my embodied knowledge into my advocacy goals as a Health Policy Research Fellow at the Weitzman Institute. My experience with cancer coupled with my positionality as an Indian Muslim American woman motivates me to examine the impact cancer has on the mental well-being of people who hold marginalized identities—especially racial and ethnic minorities. Thus, this blog post was born seeking to contextualize cancer and mental health screenings in Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) populations.
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