The effect of psychological interventions on health and improving consequences in breast cancer treatment

Background Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies affecting women around the world. The diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer can cause significant psychological distress that which in turn can affect coping, health and treatment consequences.It can influence tumor progression via many different pathways. One of psychological interventions is psychosocial support that effect the adjustment of breast cancer patients, influence their experience of and adherence to medical treatment, and may effect the course of the disease. An important aspect of psychosocial care is social support , which play a role in preventing psychological problems. Social support is the perception that an individual is a member of a complex network in which one can give and receive affection, aid, and obligation. Previous studies have consistently proved that social support can improve health outcomes. For example, social support can help women with breast cancer to adjust and cope and can have positive impacts on the survivor’s health. social support itself is beneficial to health outcome and the absence of social support is stressful, which was supported by the several previous studies on the effects of social support on depression in breast cancer patients. Supportive psychotherapy has been shown to improve quality of life and psychological symptoms, protected against depression. Methods This study was a comprehensive literature review performed through searches in databases such as Medline, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar using the terms " Breast Cancer, Psychological interventions, Adjustment, Health outcomes, Cancer treatment ". Findings Based on the results of many studies psychiatric interventions such as psychological support groups can have positive benefits on psychological adjustment among breast cancer survivors. Results of some studies showed women with metastatic breast cancer who participated in an expressive supportive group therapy intervention lived about twice as long as women in the comparison condition. Psychological distress, and psychosocial support with effect the adjustment of patients, influence their experience of and adherence to medical treatment, and may affect the course of the disease and is associated with better health outcomes for them also. Conclusions According to the studies, women with breast cancer have difficulty in all areas of their lives in the course of the disease and during the treatment process. It can be expected that psychological interventions for them will always produce beneficial effect on patients’ psychological state and adjustment with the new situation and can be high chance of success in coping of cancer survivors with their diseases and improve their health consequence.Thus, health care workers as well as the patients’ families, relatives, managers, and colleagues are encouraged to interact with patients more actively and positively to provide multidimensional supports in understanding better of the nature of the disease