Effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy alone and in Combination with Cognitive-behavioral Therapy on Hope and Pain Intensity in Women with Breast Cancer

The breast is a sensitive organ for women. In addition to pain, breast cancer can cause many psychological problems for the patient. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of gestalt therapy (GT) alone and combined with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) [GT-CBT] on the hope and pain intensity of women with breast cancer.

This quasi-experimental study had a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. Out of 96 available patients with breast cancer who were referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital Cancer Clinic in Tehran, Iran, 60 cases were selected based on the inclusion criteria and randomly assigned to the control (n=20), GT (n=20), and GT-CBT (n=20) groups. Patients in the intervention groups received weekly online sessions (90 minutes) of GT or GT-CBT during eight weeks of training using the Zoom app. The data were collected through the miller hope scale (MHS) and hayes & peterson visual analog scale (VAS) and analyzed using descriptive (Mean±SD) and inferential (analysis of covariance) statistics by SPSS software version 20. The significance level was set at 0.05.

The results indicated that both GT and GT-CBT significantly increased hope and decreased pain intensity scores (eta=0.73, F(51, 2)=70.06, P<0.001). GT-CBT showed significantly higher effectiveness than GT (P<0.05).

According to the results, it is suggested to use integrated methods, such as GT-CBT to enhance hope and manage the pain intensity of patients with breast cancer.