A supportive care « art-therapy » assessment in oncology

Abstract

Cancer treatment can have serious consequences for patients on a physical, psychological and social level. As a result of the progress in medical research, life spans are lengthening, but under what conditions? The french state is now focusing on improving quality of life for people with cancer. From the past ten years, French hospitals have been developing a coordinated cancer support care. From past research, art-therapy has proved its worth in oncology out-patient services. Improvement has been seen in respect of quality of life (Monti et al., 2006), fatigue (Nainis et al., 2006) and the level of anxiety (Vella & Budd, 2011) following participation in art-therapy sessions. We have created new workshops, in three clinics in France. Consisting of five sessions with a standard assessment protocol submitted to volunteers in test and re-test. Seven patients were include in the device, but two of them dropped of the program. This first multicentre and scoping study confirms improvement in quality of life (EORTC, p=.02) and fatigue (FACT-F, p=.01) when we have compared our five participants means (by SPSS). The NEO-PI-R results show a general openness of personality (d=0,30), specially for fantasy, feelings and values dimensions. Also, we observed best emotional functioning (EORTC, d=0,57) and emotional analysis (BVAQ, d=-0,31). Finally, creativity seems to be more fluent (TTCT, d=0,30) and more flexible (TTCT, d=0,41). Theses first results encourage us to continue the research with methodology readjustments. It also opens us to new avenues of research using new variable and establishing the correlation.