Effectiveness of Stress Management Consultation for Quality of Life and Stress of Women Suffering from Breast Cancer.

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women which endangers different aspects like individual, public health, and life quality. OBJECTIVES The aim of the present study is to investigate the consultation effectiveness of stress management on the quality of life and stress of women suffering from breast cancer. METHODS A semi-experimental research was performed with pre- and post-test design as well as control and test groups. For this purpose, 104 women suffering from breast cancer who referred to Mahdiyeh MRI and Hamedan Donors Assembly in 2015 were selected based on convenience sampling and randomly placed in two test and control groups including 52 people using permutation blocks. The test group received 9 two-hour consultation sessions of stress management, but the control group did not receive any consultation. Tools of gathering data included the questionnaire about demographic characteristics and standard questionnaire of life quality, (SF 36) and Harry's questionnaire completed by the patients of two groups before and at the end of the treatment. For the data analysis, descriptive statistics, two-factor variance, and multivariate covariance were used. RESULTS The results of the research showed that cognitive-behavioral therapy group of stress management showed an increase in the quality of life in dimensions of physical performance, emotional health, social performance, and public health, and total score of quality of life, but there was no significant effect in limitation dimensions causing emotional, energy and exhilaration, pain, and physical problems. A significant difference was observed in the average scores of stress in the test and control groups before and after the intervention (P 0.000) and stress of the test group compared to the control was reduced in the post-test and follow-up. CONCLUSION The obtained results showed that cognitive-behavioral therapy group of stress management had an increase inquality of life and its subscales and also experienced reduced stress in the test group after the intervention. Therefore, this method can be used as one of the complementary therapies besides medical therapy in oncology centers.