The Effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy Exclusively and in Combination with Cognitive-behavioral Therapy on Hope and Pain Intensity in Women with Breast Cancer

Background: Breast is a sensitive organ for women. In addition to pain, breast cancer can cause many psychological problems for the patient. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy (GT) and Gestalt therapy combined with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (GT-CBT) on the hope and pain intensity of women with breast cancer. Methods: It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest posttest control group design. Out of 96 available patients with breast cancer who had referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital Cancer Clinic in Tehran-Iran, 60 were selected based on inclusion criteria and were randomly assigned to the control (n = 20), GT (n = 20) and GT-CBT (n = 20) groups. Patients in the intervention groups received eight weekly online sessions (90minues) of GT or GT-CBT during eight weeks of training in Zoom application. The data was collected through Miller Hope Scale (MHS) and   Hayes& Peterson Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and were analyzed using descriptive (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (analysis of covariance) in SPSS 20.0. Significance level was set at 0.05. Results: The results indicated that both GT and GT-CBT have significantly increased hope and decreased pain intensity scores (eta = 0.73, F (51, 2) = 70.06, P<0.001). GT-CBT showed significantly higher effectiveness than GT (P<0.05). Conclusion: According to the results, it is suggested to use integrated methods such as GT-CBT to enhance hope and manage the pain intensity of patients with breast cancer.