Effectiveness of adjunct psychotherapy for cancer treatment: a review

Abstract

Psychotherapies were offered to alleviate psychological and physical symptoms; however, most psychological interventions were only delivered after cancer treatment. Newly diagnosed cancer patients experienced psychological distress while waiting for treatments. This review paper focused on randomized control trial studies, aimed to investigate the effectiveness of psychological intervention among newly diagnosed cancer patients. Eight randomized control trial papers were found in recent 10 year period through electronic database. A moderate to large effect size was detected on the outcomes, ranging from 0.43 to 0.89. This indicated that psychological-based prehabilitation with standard care yielded better outcomes than standard care alone. Psychological-based prehabilitation provides evidence in its effectiveness to reduce psychological distress, functional impairment, recurrence of cancer, numbers of immune reactivity and sleeping quality; however, inconsistent with longer survival result among cancer patients. In conclusion, psychological-based prehabilitation before cancer treatment is necessary for better treatment outcome, and future research is needed to investigate more directly the outcome.