Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Emotional distress is common in people with cancer, as the disease presents patients with numerous stressors, tests their coping abilities, and may trigger underlying psychological vulnerabilities. Some patients will have sufficient psychological difficulties to meet the criteria for a diagnosis of depression. Psychological difficulties are important to treat, not only because of the suffering they cause the patient, but also because they are associated with greater pain, less compliance with cancer treatment, and more distress in family members. The proposed study will test the effectiveness of a psychotherapy approach, Emotion-Focused Therapy, for treating depression in cancer patients who are experiencing coping difficulties. Emotion-Focused Therapy works by helping clients to come to terms with difficult emotions and to cope in healthy ways with difficult emotional experiences. It is a therapy approach that was developed in Canada, at York University, and is now used around the world. Previous research has shown Emotion-Focused Therapy to be effective at treating depression in physically well people. Its effectiveness at treating depression in people with cancer has not been investigated before. The proposed study will examine the effectiveness of this approach by recruiting 36 cancer patients who are also suffering from adjustment difficulties or depression. They will receive 8 sessions of either Emotion-Focused Therapy or an already existing treatment. At the end of the study participants' scores on measures of depression, cancer-related anxiety and psychological adjustment will be compared, to assess which treatment was most helpful. This research will assist clinical psychologists and others who work with cancer patients to make evidence-based decisions about which psychological therapies are the most useful for helping cancer patients who are experiencing psychological difficulties.