Evaluation of adjuvant psychological therapy for clinically referred cancer patients

Adjuvant psychological therapy (APT) is a newly developed cognitive behavioural treatment which has been designed specifically to improve the quality of life of cancer patients by alleviating emotional distress and inducing a fighting spirit. We report a phase I/II study which evaluates APT in routine clinical practice. A consecutive series of 44 outpatients with various cancers referred for psychiatric consultation and receiving APT at the Royal Marsden Hospital was studied. Standardised self-report questionnaires were used to measure anxiety, depression and four principal categories of mental adjustment to cancer, namely, fighting spirit, helplessness, anxious preoccupation and fatalism. Statistical comparisons between pre-therapy scores and scores after an average of five APT sessions revealed significant improvement in anxiety, depression, fighting spirit, anxious preoccupation and helplessness. Fatalism scores showed the same trend, but the changes were smaller. Patients with advanced disease showed as much improvement as those with local or locoregional disease. Present results indicate improvement in both psychiatric symptoms and mental adjustment to cancer associated with APT. Whether this association is causal remains to be determined by randomised controlled trials. Such a trial is in progress.