Stress-Reducing Therapy Lengthens Lives of Breast Cancer Survivors’

Stress, of course, is related to physical health.  Fighting a disease that’s well known to be deadly, like breast cancer, must certainly be one of the most stressful challenges most people will ever face.  For breast cancer patients who have cancer that comes back, stress and anxiety are intense and can definitely affect both the patient’s mental well being and her health–maybe even her chances of survival.

A new study that followed breast cancers patients over the long term has found that psychological interventions that are designed to reduce stress can help patients feel better, stay healthier, and live longer.

The therapy offered to study subjects was designed to teach them about stress, to teach them specific strategies for reducing stress, to help them manage their medical follow up, and to help them improve their ability to communicate with their doctors and other health care providers.

Of the women in the study whose breast cancer reappeared, their chances of dying of breast cancer were reduced by an impressive 59%.  This was compared to patients who received only a normal consultation after diagnosis, without a specific stress-reduction therapy.  The patients who received the therapy were also less likely to die of any cause during 14 years of follow up than the patients who did not receive the therapy.

Earlier research had shown that women who received stress-reduction therapy had 45% decreased chances of their cancer reappearing.

The present study, which was published recently in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, was led by psychologist Barbara Anderson of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The study is an important step forward in understanding the links among stress, disease, and recovery.  Dr. Anderson stresses that the study is important for a variety of reasons, not the least important of which is that doctors should prescribe and insurance companies should cover anti-stress therapies to improve the survival rates of breast cancer patients.  For breast cancer survivors whose doctors don’t recommend stress-reduction therapy, patients may want to request therapy.  As Dr. Anderson notes, now those patients can point to this research as evidence that psychological intervention is not, for cancer patients, a luxury.  It may just be a life-saver.