The Importance of Mental Health While Living with COPD

In 2015, Phyliss DiLorenzo was prepared for the worst after a multi-day hospital stay for severe breathing issues. She suspected lung cancer because of her family history with the disease and was relieved when her clinician told her she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.Then DiLorenzo thought about her grandmother, who’d been diagnosed with emphysema, a type of COPD, years earlier, and how much the disease changed her. “I watched my grandmother change from an out-and-about, on-the-go woman to someone who never left her home,” DiLorenzo said. “She even stopped walking her dog.”It wasn’t long after her diagnosis that DiLorenzo experienced the connections between anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges and life with COPD. Her fight to breathe increased her anxiety and she grew depressed when fatigue left her unable to complete her daily tasks at work. Her healthcare team back then could address her physical needs, DiLorenzo said, but didn't know how to respond when she mentioned she was depressed. The mental health “downward spiral” DiLorenzo is one of nearly 16 million Americans living with COPD, with some estimates suggesting another 15 million remain...