Effectiveness of Emotion-focused therapy on Anxiety and Quality of Life in Women With breast cancer

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy on anxiety and quality of life in women with breast cancer.

A quasi-experimental design was used to collect pre-test, post-test and follow-up data (three months after) from treatment and control groups. The sample consisted of 30 women with breast cancer in Tehran who had a high score in anxiety after screening. They were selected based on purposive sampling and randomly placed in experimental and control groups of size 15. The experimental group received 12 sessions (50 minutes) of emotion-focused therapy (Greenberg, 2010). The control group did not receive an intervention. Data were collected using Beck Anxiety Inventory and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy - Breast Cancer (FACT-B) in three stages: pre-test, post-test, and follow up, and analyzed using mixed variance analysis.

Results showed significant within and between subject differences (P<0.01) on measures of anxiety and quality of life. Emotion-focused therapy significantly reduced anxiety and increased quality of life in the treatment group relative to the control group. Moreover, post-test and follow-up levels of anxiety and quality of life differed significantly from pre-test levels, but not from each other.

Emotion-focused therapy targeting emotional processing and expression improved [d1] regulation of clients' emotions and can be used as an appropriate intervention method to reduce anxiety and increase quality of life in women with breast cancer.