An art therapy group intervention for cancer patients to counter distress before chemotherapy

ABSTRACT

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of a single group session based on art therapy (AT) for adult cancer patients to reduce anxiety and distress before anticancer treatment.

Methods: A non-randomized pre-post study design was adopted. Sixty-two patients took part in one of twenty-seven “one-off” sessions held over a four-month period. Sixty-six patients, who simply received routine medical treatment, served as the control group (CG).

Results: The intervention was appropriate to patients’ needs and feasible in the context of their routine medical care. In contrast to the CG, the intervention group(IG) participants demonstrated a decrease in symptoms of anxiety, drowsiness and tiredness.

Conclusions: The intervention proved suitable to the medical routine of patients’ care. The clinical implications of the AT protocol and future research aimed at testing it vs. a different type of psychosocial intervention in a randomized controlled study are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Cancer patients
• art therapy
• anxiety
• psychosomatic distress symptoms
• chemotherapy

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the people who volunteered as participants, as well as the oncologists, nurses, psychology trainees, support staff and the Hospital Volunteers Association (AVO-Bari) for their collaboration to the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. “San Paolo” Hospital is one of the main general hospitals of ASL BA (Local Healthcare Agency), a large Community Healthcare Institution that covers the entire Province of Bari (about 1,210,000.00 inhabitants) and that includes several general hospitals and outpatient health-care facilities. The Medical Oncology Out-Patient Unit serves a population of adult patients with solid cancer, coming from the entire Region of Puglia, Southern Italy. It is equipped with a psycho-oncology service, made by a clinical psychologist and psychology trainees.

2. In Italy, only psychologists and medical doctors can go through a psychotherapeutic training and become certified, licensed psychotherapists. In the early ’80s, during her MFT studies in the USA, the first author had the great opportunity to take two courses with Dr Myra Levick. Ever since, she has continued to study and practice art therapy, applying it in various psychotherapeutic settings, including cancer patients. In other countries (i.e., North America) a certified, licensed art therapist would have delivered the art therapy intervention here described.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.