Abstract
Introduction
As the incidence of and survival from breast cancer continue to raise, interventions
to reduce anxiety and depression before, during and after treatment are needed. Previous
studies have reported positive effects of a structured 8-week group mindfulness-based
stress reduction program (MBSR) among patients with cancer and other conditions.
Purpose
To test the effect of such a programme on anxiety and depression among women with
breast cancer in a population-based randomised controlled study.
Methods
A total of 336 women who had been operated on for breast cancer (stage I–III) were
randomised to usual care or MBSR + usual care. Questionnaires including the Symptom Checklist-90r anxiety and depression
subscales and the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale were administered
before randomisation and immediately, 6 and 12 months after the intervention.
Results
Intention-to-treat analyses showed differences between groups in levels of anxiety
(p = 0.0002) and depression (SCL-90r, p < 0.0001; CES-D, p = 0.0367) after 12 months. Graphical comparisons of participants with higher levels
of anxiety and depression at baseline showed a significantly greater decrease in the
intervention group throughout follow-up and no differences among least affected participants.
Medium-to-large effects were found for all outcomes in the intervention group in analyses
of change scores after 12 months’ follow-up.
Conclusion
The 8-week group based MBSR intervention had clinically meaningful, statistically
significant effects on depression and anxiety after 12 months’ follow-up, and medium-to-large
effect sizes. Our findings support the dissemination of MBSR among women with breast
cancer. (Clintrials.gov No.: NCT00990977).
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 20, 2012
Footnotes
☆This work was funded by the Danish Cancer Society; the Psychosocial Research Committee (Grant No.: R13-A640-09-S3) and the CAM Research Committee (Grant No.: UP7001), University of Copenhagen; Multidisciplinary CAM-Research (Grant No.: 603-44-204/SD), Danish Cancer Research Foundation (Grant No.: 50-08-2008) and the Danish Cancer Society Research Centre.
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
