Abstract
PurposeCancer patients often report low self-esteem and high emotional distress. Two factors seem particularly linked to these symptoms: emotion regulation strategies and mindfulness. The interest of hypnosis and self-care to relieve these symptoms is not well documented. Our randomized controlled trial aimed at assessing the effect of a group intervention combining self-hypnosis and self-care on self-esteem, emotional distress, emotion regulation, and mindfulness abilities of post-treatment cancer patients, as well as investigating the links between these variables.MethodsOne hundred and four patients who had suffered from cancer were randomized into the intervention group (N = 52) and the wait-list control group (N = 52). They had to answer questionnaires before (T1) and after the intervention (T2). Nine men were excluded from the analyses, leading to a final sample of 95 women with cancer. Group-by-time changes were assessed with MANOVA, and associations with self-esteem and emotional distress were investigated with hierarchical linear regression models.ResultsParticipants in the intervention group (mean age = 51.65; SD = 12.54) reported better self-esteem, lower emotional distress, a decreased use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, and more mindfulness abilities after the intervention, compared to the WLCG. This increase in mindfulness explained 33% of the improvement of self-esteem and 41.6% of the decrease of emotional distress in the intervention group. Self-esteem and emotional distress also predicted each other.ConclusionOur study showed the efficacy of our hypnosis-based intervention to improve all the investigated variables. Mindfulness predicted the improvement of self-esteem and emotional distress. The primary impact of our intervention on mindfulness abilities seems to explain, at least in part, its efficacy.Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03144154). Retrospectively registered on the 1st of May, 2017.
Highlights
Cancer and its treatment have different negative consequences on patients
Post hoc comparisons revealed an improvement of self-esteem after the intervention (p < .001; d = 0.46), as well as a decrease of emotional distress (HADS: anxiety: p < .001; depression: p < .001, with effects sizes of 0.67 and 0.71, respectively)
Our study showed the positive impact of a group intervention combining self-care and self-hypnosis on selfesteem and emotional distress
Summary
Cancer and its treatment have different negative consequences on patients They often report a low selfesteem, linked to treatments’ physical, social, and psychological side effects [1,2,3]. Low self-esteem is known to be associated with lower quality of life, and lower life and social satisfaction [3, 6, 7] Another frequent symptom is emotional distress [8,9,10,11,12], which is known to last sometimes for years after treatments [9] and which negatively impacts treatment adherence and results, as well as patients’ general quality of life [8, 13, 14]. These two variables are known to be negatively correlated, but the direction of the causality is not clear: it is not known if a low self-esteem induces higher emotional distress, or if emotional distress impacts self-esteem [2, 15,16,17]
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