Psychological interventions targeting patients with metastatic cancer and prolonged survival expectancies: advances and challenges.

Purpose Of Review: The purpose of this article is to review the formats and techniques of psychological interventions designed for patients with metastatic cancer and prolonged survival expectancies.

Recent Findings: Fifteen interventional studies were selected for this article. One group of psychological interventions focused primarily on patients' adaptation by increasing their knowledge, developing patients' stress management skills, promoting their open communication with healthcare providers, and helping them deal with existential concerns.

Psychological factors associated with clinical fear of cancer recurrence in breast cancer patients in the early survivorship period.

Objectives: Clinical fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) is highly prevalent among breast cancer patients and appears early in the disease trajectory. A better understanding of psychological factors associated with clinical FCR is essential to guide screening and intervention development. This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the contribution of attentional bias, intrusive thoughts, metacognitive beliefs, intolerance of uncertainty, thought suppression, and worry to clinical FCR in breast cancer patients in the early survivorship period.

Decisional conflict of physicians during the decision-making process for a simulated advanced-stage cancer patient: an international longitudinal study with German and Belgian physicians.

Background: Decision making with advanced cancer patients is often associated with decisional conflict regarding treatment outcomes. This longitudinal multicenter study investigated German physicians' course of decisional conflict during the decision-making process for a Simulated advanced-stage cancer Patient (SP). Results were compared to a matched sample of Belgian physicians.

Efficacy of a hypnosis-based intervention to improve well-being during cancer: a comparison between prostate and breast cancer patients.

Background: Prostate and breast cancer can have a lot of negative consequences such as fatigue, sleep difficulties and emotional distress, which decrease quality of life. Group interventions showed benefits to emotional distress and fatigue, but most of these studies focus on breast cancer patients. However, it is important to test if an effective intervention for breast cancer patients could also have benefits for prostate cancer patients.

Improving anxiety regulation in patients with breast cancer at the beginning of the survivorship period: a randomized clinical trial comparing the benefits of single-component and multiple-component group interventions.

Objective: To compare in a multicenter randomized controlled trial the benefits in terms of anxiety regulation of a 15-session single-component group intervention (SGI) based on support with those of a 15-session multiple-component structured manualized group intervention (MGI) combining support with cognitive-behavioral and hypnosis components.

Methods: Patients with nonmetastatic breast cancer were randomly assigned at the beginning of the survivorship period to the SGI (n = 83) or MGI (n = 87). Anxiety regulation was assessed, before and after group interventions, through an anxiety regulation task designed to assess their ability to regulate anxiety psychologically (anxiety levels) and physiologically (heart rates).