Depression and anxiety in women with breast cancer and their partners.
BACKGROUND
Psychosocial interventions can improve psychological quality of life (symptoms of depression and anxiety) of both women with breast cancer and their partners, but are not offered routinely to women and their partners.


OBJECTIVE
To test the hypotheses that telephone-delivered psychosocial interventions decrease depression and anxiety in women with breast cancer and their partners.


METHODS
The design of the study was a three-wave repeated measures with a between-subjects factor (treatment group). Ninety-six women and their 96 partners were assigned randomly to participate in one of three different 6-week programs: (a) telephone interpersonal counseling (TIP-C); (b) self-managed exercise; or (c) attention control (AC).


RESULTS
The mixed-model analysis of variance for symptoms of depression among women with breast cancer revealed women's depressive symptom scores decreased over time in all groups. For anxiety, women's symptoms of anxiety decreased in the TIP-C and exercise groups over time, but not in the AC group. A parallel set of analyses was conducted on partners' depression and anxiety data. Symptoms of depression and anxiety among the partners decreased substantially over the course of the investigation. Similar to the women, partners' symptoms of anxiety decreased significantly in the TIP-C and exercise groups, but not in the AC group.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings from this study support that these telephone-delivered psychosocial interventions were effective for decreasing symptoms of depression and anxiety to improve psychological quality of life when compared to an AC group.
Badger
Terry
T
College of Nursing, Department of Communication, The University of Arizona, and Arizona Cancer Center, Arizona Health Science Center, Tucson 85721-0203, USA. Tbadger@nursing.arizona.edu
Segrin
Chris
C
Dorros
Sybilla M
SM
Meek
Paula
P
Lopez
Ana Maria
AM
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001007:Anxiety / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D001288:Attention; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology*; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D003376:Counseling / Q000379:methods*; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D015444:Exercise; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D012648:Self Care; D012944:Social Support; D013689:Telephone