Evaluation of psychosocial aspects in participants of cancer genetic counseling

Leivy Patricia González-Ramírez,Livia Zagamé,Aída Araceli Silva-García,Azucena Del Toro-Valero,Reyna Martínez-Arriaga,Adrián Daneri-Navarro,Erendira Camacho-Cárdenas,Antonio Oceguera-Villanueva

doi:10.1186/s13053-017-0073-x

Abstract

BackgroundThe instrument called “Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale” (HADS) is frequently used to evaluate anxious and depressive symptomatology in patients who receive Cancer Genetic Counseling (CGC). However, this instrument cannot identify all of the psychosocial factors, such as the antecedents of the patients’ emotional states or their concerns. The objective of the present research was to compare cases detected with psychosocial alterations by means of HADS and a Psychological Health Interview (PHI).MethodsA transversal analytical design was used. One hundred ten participants were included (97.3% females and 2.7% males). The average age was 45 years ±10 years.ResultsThe PHI identified twice the amount of participants with psychosocial alterations than did HADS, which only detected 43% of these participants.ConclusionsThe results of our study suggest that the PHI should be applied in addition to HADS to identify participants who would require psychological support due to recurrent concerns.

Highlights

The instrument called “Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale” (HADS) is frequently used to evaluate anxious and depressive symptomatology in patients who receive Cancer Genetic Counseling (CGC)
The results demonstrated that there was a correlation between the variables detected by HADS and those identified by our Psychological Health Interview (PHI) (Fig. 1)
Our results showed that the combined use of PHI with HADS allowed us to identify a greater number of psychosocial alterations in CGC participants, without losing the benefits of the standardized measurement of anxiety and depression provided by HADS

Summary

Introduction

The instrument called “Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale” (HADS) is frequently used to evaluate anxious and depressive symptomatology in patients who receive Cancer Genetic Counseling (CGC). This instrument cannot identify all of the psychosocial factors, such as the antecedents of the patients’ emotional states or their concerns. It has been described that mutations in these genes explain only 25% of cases of Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (HBOC). At least another 25 genetic factors in addition to BRCA 1/BRCA 2 predispose to HBOC. BRCA 1 mutation carriers have up to 40% of risk for ovarian

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