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The Efficacy of an integrated group psychotherapy for breast cancer patients on the quality of life and immune function

Abstract

This study was performed to develop a new and integrated group psychotherapy based on the existing research results on psycho-social intervention programs for improving the quality of life of breast cancer patients, and to verify the efficacy of the program. 30 breast cancer patients participated in this integrated group psychotherapy and 23 control group members are also included in this study. The major contents of this program are composed of cognitive-behavioral therapeutic factors, supportive-expressive factors, and interpersonal relationship improvement factors. We implemented this program to breast cancer patients who are treated at the National Cancer Center in Ilsan, from March, 2004 to March, 2005. One treatment session continues for 120 minutes and it is performed during total 12 weeks. The purpose of this study is to validate if this group psychotherapy program results in the improvement of quality of life, decrease of emotional distress and improvement of the immune function for the breast cancer patients. And we would like to know if the therapeutic effects continues for some long period. The main results of this study are as follows. First, therapy group members demonstrated significant improvement of quality of life, decrease of negative emotions such as interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, and improvement of immune function compared with control group members. Second, most of these effects continued until 6 months after the termination of the program. And there are very small differences in the control group between pre-test, post-test, and follow-up tests. In summary, we can conclude that this integrated group psychotherapy for the breast cancer patients is effective to improve quality of life, to decrease negative emotion and to increase the immune function for the breast cancer patients for some long period.

keywords
breast cancer, group psychotherapy, quality of life, immune function, breast cancer, group psychotherapy, quality of life, immune function, 유방암, 집단 심리치료, 삶의 질, 면역기능암 치료를 위한 신약 및 새로운 치료법들이 계속 개발되고 있으나, 여전히 암 진단은 사망 선고와 유사하게 인식될 만큼 고통스럽고도 공포스럽게 인식되고 있다. 환자들은 암 진단이라는 충격적인 경험 이후에도 수술과 항암치료, 방사선 치료 등으로 인해 많은 어려움을 겪게 된다. 특히 유방암 환자들은 가슴절제 수술로 인한 손상된 신체 이미지와 여성성에 대한 상실감이 크고 부부관계의 문제, 대인관계에서의 예민

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