Effectiveness of Stress Management Training on Stress, Depression and Anxiety in Breast Cancer Patients

Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common cancer of the female in the world and this diagnosis cause emotional, behavioral and psychological problems in both patients and their survivorship. This study performed to evaluate the efficacy of stress management training by group therapy in decreasing stress, anxiety and depression in breast cancer patients.Materials and Methods: The study groups including non-metastatic breast cancer patients who passed surgery and underwent chemotherapy or radiotherapy that referred to Tooba clinic in Sari. Stress, anxiety and depression were diagnosed from mild to very severe according to DASS-42 inventory. In this clinical trial study patients divided into two groups named as control and experimental randomly. Pre-test and post- test performed before and after intervention for experimental group as well as control group. Stress management training performed by group therapy for experimental group during 10 sessions weekly. Pearson Correlation and pair t-test employed for data analysis.Results: Totally 48 patient enrolled in this study; control group 23 patients with mean age 44.43±9.7 years and experimental group 19 patients with mean age 38.47±7.07 years. Comparing the mean score of stress, anxiety and depression showed statistically severe significant differences in experimental group (depression: <0.001, anxiety: 0.018, stress: 0.001) but there was no statistically significant differences in control group (depression: P= 0.068, anxiety: P=0.351, stress: P=0.097).Conclusion: In our survey we found stress management training can improve psychological symptom in breast cancer patients during chemotherapy as well as radiotherapy. We suggest that this technique perform for breast cancer patients parallel other treatments. Future studies evaluate effectiveness of stress management training by group therapy in other cancer patients are warranted