As if getting a devastating diagnosis in the prime of their lives wasn’t bad enough.
Doctors have discovered a tragic new detail about young patients with colon cancer: they are at a much higher risk of suicide.
Men aged 35 to 49 with the cancer – who are defined as ‘early-onset’ – were 60 percent more likely to take their lives than their cancer-free peers.
There was a similar increased risk in men over the age of 60. Women, meanwhile, suffered 12 percent more suicides than their healthy peers, with those in their 20s at the greatest increased risk of suicide.
The shock of a diagnosis at such a critical point in young people’s lives could cause irreparable grief, the researchers wrote.
The experts believe colorectal cancer patients in particular may also be driven to suicide due to body image issues, as some patients may be fitted with colostomy bags from colorectal surgeries.
The findings come amid a colon cancer epidemic. Diagnoses have surged in the US over the past two decades, with healthy people in their 20s and 30s increasingly being getting the disease.
Experts are racing to find the cause, with recent research pointing the blame at obesity, processed foods, and sedentary lifestyles.
The above graph shows the increase in US colorectal cancers in men and women from 2000 through 2021
Amid a growing flurry of theories, researchers in North Carolina and Texas have identified common mental health issues in these patients after studying more than 500,000 patients with colorectal cancer (CRC).
The team wrote in a medical journal in the Journal of Surgical Research: ‘The impact of a CRC diagnosis on suicide risk, particularly among young adults in the United States, has not been studied to our knowledge.
‘This is particularly important given the rise in young onset CRC incidence and the impact of this diagnosis and treatment at a younger age.’
The study looked at 530,711 colorectal cancer patients ages 20 to 84. About 54 percent of participants were male, and 69 percent were white.
Out of all participants, there were 782 suicides, and nearly nine in 10 of these were among men.
The researchers found an increased risk of suicide among men ages 35 to 49 and women ages 20 to 24.
The team said this could be due to colon cancer interrupting ‘a critical time point in one’s life,’ including going to college, getting married, and starting a family.
The researchers wrote: ‘Certainly, the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of CRC during this period may be especially detrimental to their mental health.’
Men over 60 with colon cancer were also more likely than their peers to commit suicide.
The team said this is consistent with CDC data, which shows among men, those over 75 have the highest rate of suicide.
Patients who were unmarried were also more likely to commit suicide than those who were married, which could be due to a lack of social support.
Patients with more advanced disease were also twice as likely to commit suicide than those diagnosed at an earlier stage, most likely due to having a poor prognosis and dealing with a greater financial burden.
The team said doctors should pay more attention to colon cancer patients’ mental health and screen for depression in newly diagnosed patients.
Joe Faratzis (pictured left and right) was diagnosed with colon cancer after ignoring his symptoms for eight months. The disease later spread to his liver and lungs, leading him to regret waiting so long to get tested
Evan White (pictured here) was diagnosed with colon cancer at 24. He died four years later, just weeks before his wedding
Many young patients have their symptoms dismissed for more benign gastrointestinal conditions, leading to a more aggressive disease.
DailyMail.com has repeatedly documented the global rise of colon cancer among young men.
Joe Faratzis, a 34-year-old from Los Angeles, noticed a ‘dull, mild ache’ in his abdomen in 2019 but assumed scans were unnecessary.
Six months later, there was blood on the toilet paper when he used the bathroom, though he ‘wasn’t too concerned.’
Just two months after that, he finally agreed to a colonoscopy, which found stage four colon cancer. The disease later spread to his lungs and liver.
Though he is currently in remission, Mr Faratzis regrets waiting so long to get tested.
He said in a recent TikTok video: ‘Listen to your body. If you think there’s something wrong, it doesn’t hurt to go get it checked out.
‘If I hadn’t waited — if I got the CT scan back in 2019 when I had my earliest colorectal cancer symptoms — I might not have wound up in the position I’m in now.’
And Evan White, from Dallas, had just graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in finance when he was diagnosed with colon cancer after dismissing his main symptom – tiredness – for months.
The tumor was not spotted until it had progressed to stage three, meaning it had spread outside the colon, making it much harder to treat.
He died at age 29, just before his wedding.