The effect of group psychotherapy on quality of life of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or endocrine therapy during Covid-19 pandemic: One center experience.

Abstract

e24133 Background: The announcement of the pandemic by WHO had a great impact on global mental health. Mental disorders like stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, insomnia, denial, anger, and fear affected the population worldwide. Cognitive-behavioral techniques are effective in improving the control of symptoms, the affective state and coping with the disease. Methods: Female patients were offered to take part in the study by their oncologists. Inclusion criteria included female patients who were diagnosed with cancer during the last 5 years. Intervention included - Online group psychotherapy which was conducted for 3 consecutive months, three times per week, using the interactive ZOOM platform. The Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) quality of life questionnaire QLQ-C30 was used to assess QoL of participants. We asked patients to fill the ERTC questionnaire twice, before the first and after the last psychotherapy sessions. Results: Total of 25 patients aged 18-55 were included in the study, 72% were receiving hormonal therapy, and 28% were receiving chemotherapy. Majority of patients (18) were diagnosed with breast, 4 with cervical and 1 with uterine and 2 with ovarian cancer in last 5 years. All patients were white Caucasian females. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed no difference between groups on pre-RS score; But the study showed significant improvement in post RS (EORTC QLQ-C30) in patients with hormone therapy (Goodness of Fit-R square-0.4471, P-value-0.0024, 95% Confidence Intervals-0.4200 to 1.626), compare to patients with chemotherapy (Goodness of Fit-R square-0.003372, P-value- 0.9016, 95% Confidence Intervals--1.743 to 1.929).All measures were presented as mean with standard deviation and the level of significance was defined as DELTA(D) = 0.05. Conclusions: According to our research, group psychotherapy had a positive effect on quality of life of cancer patients undergoing hormonal therapy and showed no significant impact on patients treated with chemotherapy. More research and a larger sample size is needed for a better interpretation of results.