Personality and Cognitive Changes That Accompany Disease and Treatment

Serious illnesses and the treatments for those conditions can have many effects on us. They may limit us physically in lots of obvious ways based on the nature of the illness and the types of treatment. We usually expect those and are not too troubled by them because they are fairly common or because we’ve been told to anticipate them by the medical team.

However, sometimes those changes can involve our personality and/or our mental functioning. Those changes can be much more disturbing for our family members and friends because they lead us to behave in ways that are not like us. Such out of character behavior and the unpredictability of our actions can be scary for people who have come to know what to expect from us. And, unlike some of the physical changes and limitations, it is usually not at all clear what should be done to address these changes.

So that we all understand what is meant by these terms, let’s define them. For the sake of this discussion let’s say that personality is the set of emotional or psychological characteristics that people would most often use to describe us. These descriptions are possible because most of us are fairly consistent in the way we interact with people, care for ourselves, handle our responsibilities, and present ourselves to the world. The rest of us are fairly consistent in our inconsistencies, if you know what I mean.

Some personality changes are the result of the intense fear, pain, and uncertainty that a serious illness can cause. If we have never had to deal with anything really scary or been subjected to intense pain we may have no strategies for handling them and our behavior and demeanor may seem very intense and quickly changing. Basically, we are scrambling inside to find a way to manage what’s going on emotionally and physically and we don’t really have a road map or game plan. Until we identify something that works we might be described as being “all over the place”.

Other more serious personality changes sometimes occur when the illness or treatment “awakens” an old traumatic experience. This experience may be another serious disease that you once faced or it may be the frightening experiences of a family member or close friend who may or may not have recovered from a serious illness. Such experiences can bring about some very significant changes in functioning as you work to move through all the feelings, thoughts, and memories that are stirred up.