Effect of Psycho-Social Rehabilitation on Psychological Well-being, Mental Health and Body Image Concern in Mastectomized Women

Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in women which their most common treatment is mastectomy. Mastectomized women have a many psychological problems. Regarded to effectiveness of psycho-social rehabilitation, present research aimed to determine the effect of psycho-social rehabilitation on psychological well-being, mental health and body image concern in mastectomized women.

The method of present study was quasi-experimental with pretest and posttest design with control group. The research population was mastectomized women in Pastorno hospital of Mashhad city in 2018 year. From the members of population, 50 people after reviewing the inclusion criteria were selected by available sampling method and randomly replaced into two equal groups. The experimental group trained 8 sessions of 90-minutes as a group psycho-social rehabilitation program and the control group didn’t receive any training. Data collected by form of demographic information and the questionnaires of psychological well-being, mental health and body image concern and analyzed with using statistical tests of Chi-square, t-test and multivariate analysis of covariance.

The findings showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of age, education and duration of mastectomy in mastectomized women (P>0.05). Also, in the pretest stage there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of psychological well-being, mental health and body image concern (P>0.05), but in the posttest stage there was significant difference in terms of all three variables (P<0.05). In the other words, psycho-social rehabilitation program led to significant improve of psychological well-being and mental health and significant decrease of body image concern in mastectomized women (P<0.05).

Based on the results, use from psycho-social rehabilitation approach along with other educational and therapeutic approaches by therapists and health professionals can be effective to improve different psychological characteristics especially improve psychological well-being and mental health and decrease of body image concern of vulnerable groups including mastectomized women.