Self-help leads to longer survival
A
recent study of people with cancer has shown a strong link between
longer survival and involvement in psychological self-help activities,
with patients adopting these activities living 2.25 times longer
than expected. Researchers in Toronto, Canada followed 22 patients
with medically incurable cancers of various kinds, who received
weekly group therapy for up to one year. During this time patients
provided extensive data through written homework and notes taken
by therapists at interviews and during group sessions.
The
data was then subjected to detailed qualitative analysis, allowing
a number of psychological themes to be defined. A value was then
assigned to each theme for every individual patient through team
discussions. These values were then added up to produce a 'total
psychological score', representing the degree of each patient's
involvement with psychological self-help work and allowing these
scores to then be related to each patient's length of survival.
The results show that five of the six major psychological themes
defined were significantly related to longer survival.
•
Ability to act and change
•
Willingness to initiate change
•
application to self-help work
•
Relationships with others
•
Quality of their experience
There
was also a strong relationship between longer survival and the
patient's expectancy that psychological factors would affect their
outcome.
To control for variations in the severity of disease between each
patient, something which may have affected the ability to undertake
self-help work, a panel of oncologist's was asked to use their
experience of each different form of cancer to predict median
survival rates for each patient. These estimates enabled the researchers
to assess the degree to which each patient outlived their predicted
survival.
According
to the researchers this is the first study to follow patients
over an extended period before their outcome is known. Most previous
studies have retrospectively selected 'remarkable survivors' whereas
the aim of this research was not to look for cures but to document
smaller variations in the length of life and to relate this to
variations in psychological interventions.
Psycho-Oncology.
9 (4) 323-339
