Published on: June 25, 2018

“As anyone who has faced a life threatening illness will tell you, what keeps you awake at night is not the thought of another round of chemotherapy but the fear that you are alone,” writes Harmala Gupta, founder-president of CanSupport, in the Times of India.

She refers to the recent suicides by an elderly scientist and a police officer. “A life draining illness and old age make you aware, as nothing else does, of what a load each one of us carries.”

“When I returned from Toronto in 1987, after my own personal experience with cancer, I was determined to bring the programme that I had witnessed in Canada to New Delhi. Not everyone understood the need for psychosocial support at that time. I was told that it was a Western thing; in India we had the family and our faith.”

Read the article: Unbearable heaviness of being: The aged, as well as cancer patients, require psychosocial as much as medical support