Empowerment among breast cancer survivors using an online peer support community.

Objectives: Breast cancer (BC) impacts the patients' quality of life. Peer support can provide emotional understanding and enhances access to information, social support, coping strategies, and empowerment. Comunitats is an online peer support community app for BC survivors that involves healthcare professionals.

Cognitive-enhanced eHealth psychosocial stepped intervention for managing breast cancer-related cognitive impairment: Protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Introduction: Breast cancer often leads to cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI), which includes both objective and subjective cognitive deficits. While psychosocial interventions benefit quality of life and distress reduction, their impact on cognitive deficits is uncertain. This study evaluates the integration of a cognitive module into a digital psychosocial intervention for breast cancer patients.

An eHealth ecosystem for stepped and early psychosocial care in advanced lung cancer: Rationale and protocol for a randomized control trial.

Background: Receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer is an emotional event, not least because it is usually diagnosed at advanced stages with limited life expectancy. Although evidence-based educational, emotional, and social interventions exist, they reach few patients and usually when it is too late.

Objective: This project will be carried out in a comprehensive center for cancer care and health research, aiming to study the efficacy, costs, and utility of an eHealth ecosystem to meet the psychosocial needs of patients with advanced lung cancer.

A Digital Cancer Ecosystem to Deliver Health and Psychosocial Education as Preventive Intervention.

Health education and psychosocial interventions prevent emotional distress, and the latter has been shown to have an impact on survival. In turn, digital health education interventions may help promote equity by reaching a higher number of cancer patients, both because they avoid journeys to the hospital, by and having a better efficiency. A total of 234 women recently diagnosed with breast cancer in a comprehensive cancer center used the digital ecosystem ICOnnecta’t from March 2019 to March 2021.

Stressful Life Events and Distress in Breast Cancer: A 5-Years Follow-Up.

Background/objective: Environmental factors such as psychosocial stress have demonstrated to have an impact on the breast cancer (BC) course. This study aims to explore the impact of psychotherapy and stressful life events (SLE) on BC survivors' illness trajectories.

Method: 68 women with BC underwent Positive Psychotherapy or Cognitive-Behavioral Stress Management and 37 patients were included as a control group.

ICOnnecta't: Development and Initial Results of a Stepped Psychosocial eHealth Ecosystem to Facilitate Risk Assessment and Prevention of Early Emotional Distress in Breast Cancer Survivors' Journey.

Psychosocial interventions prevent emotional distress and facilitate adaptation in breast cancer (BC). However, conventional care presents accessibility barriers that eHealth has the potential to overcome. ICOnnecta't is a stepped digital ecosystem designed to build wellbeing and reduce psychosocial risks during the cancer journey through a European-funded project.

E-health ecosystem with integrated and stepped psychosocial services for breast cancer survivors: study protocol of a multicentre randomised controlled trial.

Introduction: Psychosocial interventions for patients with breast cancer (BC) have demonstrated their effectiveness at reducing emotional distress and improving quality of life. The current digitisation of screening, monitoring and psychosocial treatment presents the opportunity for a revolution that could improve the quality of care and reduce its economic burden. The objectives of this study are, first, to assess the effectiveness of an e-health platform with integrated and stepped psychosocial services compared with usual psychosocial care, and second, to examine its cost-utility.

Psychosocial aspects and life project disruption in young women diagnosed with metastatic hormone-sensitive HER2-negative breast cancer.

Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) diagnosis in young women negatively impacts on quality of life (QoL) and daily activities, disrupting their life project and forcing them to face new psychosocial challenges. The recently published results on the improvement of the overall survival of pre- or perimenopausal women with hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative MBC treated with CDK4/6 inhibitors plus endocrine therapy, while preserving, and in some items improving their QoL, will change the landscape of the management of this patient population. Their extended survival and potential improvement in QoL will, therefore, modify their specific needs in terms of psychosocial support.

Video conference vs face-to-face group psychotherapy for distressed cancer survivors: A randomized controlled trial.

Objective: This study assesses the effectiveness of face-to-face group positive psychotherapy for cancer survivors (PPC) compared to its online adaptation, online group positive psychotherapy for cancer survivors (OPPC), which is held via videoconference. A two-arm, pragmatic randomized controlled trial was conducted to examine the effects of both interventions on emotional distress, post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), and post-traumatic growth (PTG) among cancer survivors and analyze attrition to treatment.

Methods: Adult women with a range of cancer diagnoses were invited to participate if they experienced emotional distress at the end of their primary oncological treatment.

An exploratory study in breast cancer of factors involved in the use and communication with health professionals of Internet information.

Objective: To study the impact of the spontaneous use of Internet on breast cancer patients and on their relationship with health professionals.

Methods: A mixed methodology was used. Two questionnaires were designed through three focus groups, and then administered to 186 patients and 59 professionals in order to assess: (1) patients' use of Internet for health-related information and (2) the impact of this information on patients' psychological outcomes and on their relationship with professionals.

Approaching psychosocial complexity in patients with cancer.

Background And Aim: To assess emotional distress and complexity of patients referred to the Psychosocial Committee.

Material And Methods: A pre-post single group study was performed in a sample of oncological patients. From the 144 patients referred to the committee, 27 were attended by psychosocial specialists.

Stress and Growth in Cancer: Mechanisms and Psychotherapeutic Interventions to Facilitate a Constructive Balance.

Post-traumatic stress and growth are common responses to adverse life events such as cancer. In this article, we establish how cancer becomes a "fertile land" for the emergence of stress and growth responses and analyze the main mechanisms involved. Stress-growth responses on adjusting to cancer is potentially determined by factors like the phase of the illness (e.