You could argue that false hope makes patients feel good and stirs the same placebo effect as realistic hope. Those are both healing benefits. Why my insistence that Healthy Survivors nourish realistic hope?
False hopes that cause no harm are not a problem, and I usually let it go. If patients believe eating an ounce of Cheetos every day will help their chemotherapy work better, I say, 'Go for it."
As explained in False Hope, the danger of false hope is that it leads some patients to actions that cause great harm and/or it leads patients away from actions that can help. It's a tragedy if patients' belief in the healing power of Cheetos leads them to decline effective cancer therapies.
Patients' resources are limited. Time, attention, energy and money patients spend pursuing false hopes are not being used to increase their chance of realistic hopes coming to fruition.
In following your posts beginning with "A Risk of Empowering Patients" I am reminded of what a young adult patient stated in a group many years ago when I began my work in oncology. He called himself a "realistic Optimist". He was going to do everything he could to beat his disease but he also wanted to live with the reality he didn't have complete control over the outcome. I have shared that with many patient groups over the years when the issue of uncertainty or false hope comes up.
Thanks for an in-dept exploration of the meaning of HOPE.
Posted by: Richard Dickens | February 13, 2017 at 08:02 AM