Psychological distress in thyroid cancer patients: Influencing factors and intervention strategies

Thyroid cancer is a common endocrine malignancy with a rising incidence. Patients often suffer from mental pain due to concerns about recurrence, treatment-related side-effect, and body image changes. Demographic factors like age, gender, physiological factors such as somatic symptoms and disease stage, cognitive-regulatory factors including negative and positive thinking, and social factors like work, economy, education level, and social support all influence their mental state. Existing interventions, including nursing, psychological, and traditional Chinese medicine-based methods, have some benefits but face limitations like short-term effectiveness and lack of standardization. Future research should focus on creating better-defined, long-term, and widely applicable intervention programs and explore positive psychology-based approaches to improve patients' mental well-being and quality of life.