Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Stress Management Treatment on Cortisol Levels and Quality of Life in Patients with Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers among men worldwide. It is very important to pay attention to the psychological status of patients with lung cancer due to the high level of vulnerability of these patients during treatment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of stress management treatment with a cognitive-behavioral approach on cortisol levels and quality of life in patients with lung cancer.

The present study was a quasi-experimental with pre-test-post-test and follow-up period (3 months). In this study, 30 patients with lung cancer referred to Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran were selected by purposive sampling and randomly divided into experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) groups. They were pre-tested using SF-36 quality of life questionnaire and cortisol level. The experimental group was then treated with stress management for 8 sessions with a cognitive-behavioral approach and the control group did not receive any intervention. Finally, both groups were retested and the data were analyzed using SPSS software version 21 and multivariate repeated measures analysis of variance.

The findings showed that there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups after the implementation of stress management treatment with cognitive-behavioral approach. Thus, the mean score of quality of life components increased and cortisol level decreased in the experimental group compared to the control group (P<0.001).

According to the results of this study which showed that stress management treatment with cognitive-behavioral approach is effective in increasing quality of life and reducing cortisol levels in patients with lung cancer, it can be suggested that in order to improve quality of life and Decreased cortisol levels in these patients should be psychologically screened and clinical trials and appropriate intervention models should be considered in the process of drug treatment to improve the quality of life of these patients.