Abstract
Cancer patients have various kinds of social problems, worries or fears for recurrence or advance of cancer itself. Psychological support for the patients is needed and the effectiveness of several approaches, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy has been shown in previous research. Problem-solving therapy or technique is one of the cognitive-behavioral approaches and supposed to be effective method for the decreasing of psychological distress of the cancer patients. Our study group carried out a phase II clinical trial regarding the effectiveness and feasibility of problem-solving therapy (PST) for psychological distress experienced by Japanese early-stage breast cancer patients. Participants were 36 post-surgery Japanese breast cancer patients. After screening for psychological distress, highly distressed patients were exposed to 5 weekly sessions of the PST program. 19 patients completed the intervention and follow-up. There was a significant difference between the pre-intervention and the 3-month follow-up in the total HADS score (p = .02), and the mean change score from pre-intervention to follow-up was 6.05 (SD = 1.94). The intervention had a large effect size (d = .82). There were also significant changes in worry, self-efficacy, and QOL measures. The findings of our study suggest that the PST-based program have potential to be effective for alleviating psychological distress experienced by Japanese cancer patients. The effectiveness and implementation of the therapy in routine clinical setting needs to be future explored.
