The effectiveness of positive psychotherapy and psychodrama on the resilience of breast cancer patients

Cancer patients experience a lot of physical, mental, economic and family pressures, which in most cases cause them to lose resilience and feel despair, and as a result, their mental and physical health deteriorates. For this reason, the aim of the current research was to compare the effectiveness of positive group psychotherapy and psychodrama group psychotherapy on the resilience of women with breast cancer in order to find useful ways to increase resilience in these patients.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up plan with a control group. The research population included all women in the age group of 25 to 45 years old and suffering from breast cancer referring to a clinic in Gandhi Street, Tehran, and 45 of them were selected as a sample by purposive sampling method. These people were replaced in three groups: psychodemonstrating, positive psychotherapy and control group (15 people in each group). The participants answered the resilience scale (Connor and Davidson, 2003) during three stages of assessment in the form of pre-test, post-test and follow-up.

The results of the multivariate repeated measurement analysis of variance test showed that the resilience scores of the positive therapy group and the psychodemonstrating group increased significantly (p≤0/01) from the pre-test to the post-test and returned with a gentle slope in the follow-up phase.

According to the findings of the research, group positive psychotherapy and psychodrama therapy are both useful treatments for increasing resilience in women with breast cancer, but positive therapy is a more effective treatment in this population.