The Efficacy of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on Emotion Regulation among Patients with Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is known as a chronic disease to which its diagnosis and treatment is accompanied with a lot of psychological problems; and it necessitates the application of an effective and useful therapy. The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of MBCT on emotion regulation among patients with breast cancer.
Methods A randomized controlled trial, with pre-test, post-test assessments and control group, was conducted. As a sample, 27 patients (14 patients on experimental group and 13 patients on control group) with the diagnosis of breast cancer were selected among the patients who referred to the Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy of Shohaday-e 7 Tir Hospital in Tehran using convenient sampling method, and were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups. Experimental group received 8 sessions MBCT but control group did not receive any interventions. All the participants completed emotion regulation questionnaires on the pre-test and post-test phases. Data was analyzed through multivariate covariance analysis model using SPSS 21 software.
Findings revealed that there is significant difference between emotion regulation of experimental and control groups at pre-test and post-test phases. So MBCT significantly improved emotion regulation (p The results showed that MBCT improve patient emotion regulation by challenging the thought and correcting the emotions so MBCT could be a useful treatment for improving psycho-social consequence of breast cancer and patients’ self-care.