Online Group Therapy for Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a serious and life-threatening health problem that is increasing all over the world and in Turkey. Although the survival rate increases with the improvement of the diagnosis and treatment processes for breast cancer, cancer patients experience some psychosocial problems both due to their treatment and the disease. Decreases in quality of life, psychological distress, especially depression and anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder as well as sleep disorders, fatigue, fear of cancer recurrence could be common negative outcomes that experienced by the breast cancer patients. Although, cancer could be such a life-threatening disease, some patients report that they experience positive changes in their lives after the diagnosis of cancer. The concept of Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) was first developed by Tedeschi and Calhoun (1995). PTG is a concept that refers positive psychological changes after struggling an stressful life event. According to the Functional-Descriptive model of Tedeschi and Calhoun, post-traumatic growth occurs in five areas; relating to others, personal strength, spiritual changes and appreciation of life. In this context, a group intervention program has been developed for PTG, which will bring the person to a better functionality than before the trauma to enhance the Post-Traumatic Growth level of women with breast cancer. The current research project will consist of three arms; therapy group, support group and wait-list. Online group therapy consists of eight sessions that continue approximately 90 minutes. In addition to an active treatment group for PTG, an online support group has been developed by the researchers to investigate the effectiveness of the therapy. Online support group also consists of eight sessions during approximately 90 minutes as in intervention program. Wait-list is considered as a control group. A set of reliable and validated measurement tools will be administered and heart rate variability as a physical measurement will be used to examine the effects of the therapy. The research hypotheses are based on that patients who participated active treatment group will have better PTG level and other related concept with PTG (like higher score of deliberate rumination) and better Heart-Rate Variability scores than other groups. The researcher will plan to take three time measurement: pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 1-month follw-up.