Existential Suffering in the Social Context of Cancer Risk

Scientific developments have expanded the struggle against cancer beyond diagnosed patients to large, targeted populations of asymptomatic individuals invited for cancer screening. Medicine offers these individuals procedures aimed at the detection of cancer in its early stages to improve recovery and survival. We view this process within the frame of risk assessment, the risk assigned to ‘healthy’ individuals, which carries significant implications. Ulrich Beck’s notion of a “risk society” illustrates the new developments in screening and testing asymptomatic individuals. The socio-medical status of screened individuals (even if they were only invited for screening tests) is altered by assigning them an at-risk status, thus, affecting their quality of life: on the Healthy-Sick axis, their ‘healthy’ status is questioned without defining them as ‘sick’, but it may lead to questions, doubts, and even suffering. The resulting uncertainly, with new meaning assigned to health, personal futures, hopes and life itself, place the person defined at risk in ‘limbo’ and may cause a sense of helplessness, hopelessness, and hence, existential suffering. Recognition of this complex situation may alleviate individual existential suffering. Individuals may be able to benefit from the experience through meaning-centered reflection about their lives, as suggested by Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, and through adjustment to the reality of a risk-society.