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Structured, group-based cognitive behavior stress management may ameliorate cancer-related anxiety during active medical treatment for breast carcinoma Previous
work has shown that psychosocial intervention can improve some aspects of
quality of life in women with breast cancer. Most studies, however, use
designs that do not take into account the patient’s point in medical
treatment and do not follow patients for effects over longer than a few
months. We recruited 199 women 4 – 8 weeks after surgery for Stage 1 –
3 disease and just prior to the onset of adjuvant therapy and randomized
them to either 10 weeks of group-based cognitive behavioral stress
management (CBSM) or a one-day psychoeducational seminar. Women in CBSM
followed a theoretically-derived manualized intervention program (Antoni,
2003) where they attended weekly 2-hour sessions with up to 7 other
patients in which they learned relaxation, guided imagery and deep
breathing as well as CBT techniques designed to change cognitive
appraisals of stressors, enhance cognitive and behavioral coping
strategies, and build interpersonal skills such as assertiveness and anger
management targeted to their social networks. Those assigned to 10-wk CBSM
showed decreases in Hamilton interviewer-rated anxiety symptoms as well as
intrusive thoughts about cancer, effects which held up to one year while
women in the one-day psychoeducational control showed no such effects.
Therefore, psychosocial interventions that address the ways in which women
deal with stress across the treatment process may improve psychosocial
adjustment in women with breast cancer.
References:
Mike Antoni Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA
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