The effect of spiritual cognitive emotional group therapy in reducing psychological problems in cancer patients

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women that can causes many psychological problems in patients. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of spiritual cognitive-emotional group therapy in the reduction of psychological problems in female patients suffering breast cancer. In this quasi-experimental study, the pretest-posttest design was used. From the hospitals, 18 female participants diagnosed with breast cancer were selected according to their availability and then, randomly distributed into two groups of experiment and control. The therapy program included the participation of the experimental group in 10 sessions of spiritual cognitive emotional group therapy. Each session lasted 90 minutes. Beck depression inventory, beck anxiety inventory, and identity crisis questionnaire were used for collecting data. The ANCOVA results demonstrated that the spiritual cognitive emotional group therapy was effective in reducing anxiety, depression, absurdity, despair, life dissatisfaction, sadness, and increasing self-esteem in women with breast cancer. Therefore, according to these findings we can conclude that spiritual cognitive emotional group therapy was effective in reducing the psychological problems of patients suffering cancer.