The Link Between Depression and Breast Cancer Survival

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was just 33 years old. I was 13.

Back then, I couldn’t fully understand what she was going through during and after treatment. But now in my late thirties, as a mom of two and a BRCA1 previvor myself on the other side of a preventive mastectomy and total hysterectomy, I see her experience through a completely different lens.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve cared for countless patients facing serious illnesses like breast cancer in my work as a palliative care physician. The one thing that rings loudly through every story is the emotional and mental burden that must be shouldered, which can be just as heavy to carry as the cancer diagnosis itself.

Looking back, my mom’s experience with cancer at 33 was very different from her recurrence at 49. Although she had our immediate family to support her through her initial treatment, it was as if she faced her first cancer diagnosis behind closed doors. We are South Asian, so culturally, there wasn’t space for her to openly process what was happening. There were no support groups with other women in their thirties juggling it all — cancer, menopause, motherhood, and everything in between.

Sixteen years later, when the cancer came back, she wasn’t alone. This time, she had me and a solid group of strong supportive women around her. Survivorship looked different this time. For the first time, we peeled back the layers of her first cancer experience — the grief, resentment, sadness, fear, and unresolved pain — and finally gave those emotions the space they deserved to be heard and processed. And I finally understood the years of severe anxiety and depression she struggled through after her cancer treatment ended.

Almost every cancer survivor will agree with this one truth: Cancer doesn’t end when treatment does.

Long after treatment ends, patients can struggle with a silent storm of complications, as well as their sense of self, their relationships, and a longing for the life they once had.

The State of Your Mental Health Affects Breast Cancer Survival

3 Simple Tips to Boost Mental Health During and After Cancer

1. Move Your Body

2. Find Ways to Be Seen and Heard

We live in an age where access to support is all around us and we can connect with people living with exactly what we are going through. And being with others who can truly understand our experience can be extremely healing for our mental and emotional health.

3. Eat the Rainbow

My mom is a two-time breast cancer and divorce survivor, and no doubt the strongest woman I know. But I often wonder how her experience after cancer in her thirties would have been different if her mental and emotional health were prioritized just as much as the chemotherapy and radiation. How would life be different if she had access to spaces with other women where she could cry, vent, laugh, grieve, and rebuild herself with others who just got it?

My hope is that as cancer treatments advance, so will the incorporation of mind-body interventions for true healing through the cancer journey. So, if you are reading this and navigating life after breast cancer — your feelings are valid. Healing will take time. And you are not alone.