This systematic review reports the results of three meta-analyses addressing the clinical efficacy of psychological interventions in breast cancer patients. Three outcome variables were examined: anxiety, depression and quality of life. Several moderator variables were found to both account for inter-trial heterogeneity and interact with treatment efficacy; methodological quality, prognosis, treatment type, orientation and duration. A clinically moderate treatment effect was found for anxiety (-0.40, 95% CI, -0.72 to -0.08, N = 1278). This was not robust to study quality, but remained stable for patients with more advanced disease. Short-term group therapy was more effective than longer term intervention and individual ones. A clinically moderate-to-strong effect was found in trials assessing depression (-1.01, 95% CI, -1.48 to -0.54, N = 1324). A more robust finding of -0.47 (95% -0.69 to -0.24) was based on methodologically more reliable studies treating patients with high psychological morbidity. Intervention was shown to have moderate effects on improving QOL (0.74, 95% CI, 0.12 to 1.37, N = 623), though it was not robust to study quality. Findings suggest that short-term treatments with a focus on coping may be more suitable for early breast cancer patients. Patients with advanced breast disease appear to benefit more from longer term interventions which emphasize support. Recommendations are also made for future clinical trials.

Early breast cancer affects one in every nine women along with their families. Advances in screening and biomedical interventions have changed the face of breast cancer from a terminal condition to a chronic disease with biopsychosocial features. The present review surveyed the nature and extent of psychological morbidity experienced by the breast cancer survivor and her spouse during the post-treatment phase, with particular focus on the impact of disease on the marital relationship. Interpersonal processes shown to unfold in couples facing breast cancer, as well as risk factors associated with greater psychological morbidity, were reviewed. Moreover, interpersonal processes central to coping with chronic illness and adjustment were reconceptualized from the point of view of attachment theory. Attachment theory was also used as the grounding framework for an empirically supported couples-based intervention, Emotionally Focused Therapy, which is advanced as a potentially useful treatment option for couples experiencing unremitting psychological and relational distress following diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer.

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Background Aggressive behavior in children and adolescents may be accounted for by several disruptive behavioral disorders (DBD) including attention-deficit/hyperactive (ADHD), conduct (CD), and oppositional defiant (ODD), disorders and intermittent explosive disorder (IED). The comorbidity among the DBDs is well known, but not its comorbidity with IED. Method We reanalyzed data from the National Comorbidity Studies (adolescents and adults), and from a large clinical research adult sample, to estimate the comorbidity of IED with each of the DBDs and to explore correlates of these comorbidities. Results The rate of current comorbidity between IED and the DBDs ranged from 10 to 19%, in adolescents (5–14% in adults) with odds ratios of about five. The onset of ADHD typically appeared before onset of IED while onset ODD and CD more typically appeared before that of IED in adolescents and about equally before or after IED in adults but IED persisted outside the duration window in many (ADHD) or most (ODD, CD) cases. Measures of impulsive aggression severity were highest in those with IED+DBD but relatively low in those with DBD alone while measures of DBD severity were highest in those with DBD alone and in those with IED+DBD. Conclusion Despite the comorbidity of IED with the DBDs, IED can be separated from the DBDs over time and in terms of severity measures of IED and of DBD. Overall, impulsive aggression varies with IED while DBD behaviors vary with DBD. Based on this, clinicians should consider IED in their differential in the workup of impulsively aggressive children and adolescents.

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