Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavior Stress Management on Reducing Clinical Symptoms in Patients with Breast Cancer

Abstract

Objective: Patients with breast cancer have symptoms of anxiety, depression and anxiety. This study was aimed to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral stress management on the clinical symptoms among patients with breast cancer. Methods: The was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test and follow up assessments. Twenty patients were randomly allocated into two groups: experimental group (10 patients) and control group (10 patients). Cognitive-behavioral stress management was administrated in 8 sessions for experimental group. The research instrument was SCL-90-R questionnaire. Data was analyzed by SPSS-25 software using repeated measure ANOVA. Results: The results showed that cognitive-behavioral intervention led to reduction in clinical symptoms in some dimensions as measured by the SCL-90-R among patients in experimental group (P < 0.05). Conclusion: The findings indicated that the cognitive-behavioral stress management could reduce clinical symptoms of patients with breast cancer. Indeed, using cognitive-behavioral stress management in cancer treatment centers can be regarded as a complementary therapy alongside medical treatments.

Keywords

• cognitive-behavior stress management
• clinical symptoms
• breast cancer