None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Research has shown that about one third of cancer patients experience significant emotional distress . Consequently the New Zealand Ministry of Health is currently focussing on psychological care for cancer patients. An intervention that may be useful in reducing distress for cancer patients is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). DBT is a group therapy that teaches strategies to regulate feelings. The research question is : How can brief Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) groups be tailored to reduce distress, increase quality of life and increase resilience for cancer patients? This research will use a mixed methods design to conduct a pilot study. Two conditions consisting of 30 participants each will be recruited through the Auckland District Health Board Oncology Department. In the first condition participants will attend unmodified brief DBT groups and then be invited to be part of a focus group whose feedback will be used to tailor the group content to include material relevant to cancer patients. In the second condition participants will act as a control group and will then receive the tailored DBT to see if the altered, tailored content achieves better results. Distress, quality of life and resilience will be measured before and after group attendance in both conditions using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life C 30 Questionnaire and the Connor- Davidson Resilience Scale. The proposed pilot study may evidence a group psychological intervention for cancer patients.
Interventions
Group psychological intervention consisting of 6 group sessions of 2 hours each delivered by a clinical Psychologist with 20 years + experience. The format of each session involves learning a skill, discussion of how to use it and practice of the skill. The skills include Distress Tolerance Skills such as distraction and self soothing and Emotional Regulation skills such as checking the facts for example taken from the skills training manual developed for Dialectical Behaviour Therapy skills tr
Group psychological intervention consisting of 6 group sessions of 2 hours each delivered by a clinical Psychologist with 20 years + experience. The format of each session involves learning a skill, discussion of how to use it and practice of the skill. The skills include Distress Tolerance Skills such as distraction and self soothing and Emotional Regulation skills such as checking the facts for example taken from the skills training manual developed for Dialectical Behaviour Therapy skills training groups developed by Marsha Linehan (1993, 20013).. Sessions are face to face over a three week period twice weekly. There will be a register of sessions attended for each participant. Participants will be coached at the next session regarding any difficulties they encountered using the skills. The intervention will take place on the premises of Auckland District Health Board, Auckland New Zealand.The intervention is based on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy skills groups. Part of the research will involve using participant feedback to adapt the intervention for cancer patients.
Sponsors
Auckland University of Technology
Study design
Allocation
Non-randomised trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to 65 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria for participation will be 18-65 year old adults with a diagnosis of cancer who score 4 or above on the Distress Thermometer (Ransom et al., 2006), who are able to read, write and understand English and have no diagnosed psychiatric illness within the last year.
Exclusion criteria
Patients who have a diagnosis of cancer and who are in current psychological treatment or counselling will be excluded from this study.
Outcome results
None listed