Patients with cancer are often the center of attention of family and friends because of the symptoms they have "cancer", and they need help to get their care and maintain their lives.  The physical illness creates an emotional set of issues both in the patient and often in those around them. Patients need attention given to practical and psychological needs at home. , and often family and friends are the best people to meet those needs. In that sense, cancer is a family disease. 

Typically, while the patient needs tests and then therapy and also attention to practical and psychological issues at home, interactions between the patient and family and friends imply that the major issues surround the patient. Not so obvious to others are the issues that family and friends have. While family and friends may be helping with appointments, cooking and other tasks, they may be hurting as individuals because all of them fear a loss – of a partner, a brother or sister, a parent, or a friend.

Patients may have explicit responses to changes in their status, but friends and family may bear the burden of that change only within themselves, silently. Patients often think and sometimes ask, “Will I die?”, "Am I curable?", or "Will I get sick with chemotherapy?" Conversations around those questions need to take place for the patient's sake, but who helps that family member or friend who may have the same anxieties?

People with cancer often let emotions control their actions. Sometimes, that's not a luxury many of the family members or friends have. "Talk therapy" among friends and family and, if needed, with a professional is often in the best interests of many people besides the patient.