Effectiveness of Psychodrama on Body Image, Emotional Regulation andSubjective Well-being in Women with Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in women and patients have problems with subjective well-being, emotional regulation and body image. Due to the need for intervention to improve the women with breast cancer and little research on the effectiveness of psychodrama, the present study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of psychodrama on body image, emotional regulation and subjective well-being in women with breast cancer.

This quasi-experimental study was a pre-test, post-test and follow-up study with a control group. The study population was women with breast cancer who were referred to Shohada Tajrish Hospital in Tehran, Iran in 2019. Thirty women were selected by the available sampling method and were divided into two equal groups of test and control (n=15 in each group) by simple random method. The experimental group was trained in 10 sessions of 90 minutes by psychodrama and the control group was placed on a waiting list for training. Data were collected using body image, emotional regulation and subjective wellbeing questionnaires.

The experimental and control groups were matched in terms of age, education, marriage and number of children (P> 0.05). Also, there was no significant difference between the groups in the pre-test phase in terms of body image, emotional regulation and subjective well-being (P> 0.05), but in the posttest and follow-up phases, a significant difference was recorded in terms of all three variables (P <0.001). In addition, psychodrama improved body image, emotional regulation and subjective well-being in women with breast cancer and this improvement was maintained in the follow-up phase (P <0.001).

The findings showed the effectiveness of psychodrama on improving body image, emotional regulation and subjective well-being and continuing its effectiveness. Therefore, therapists and health professionals can use the psychodrama method along with other treatment methods to improve the characteristics of breast cancer patients, especially improving body image, emotional regulation and subjective well-being.