An Observational Study to Determine the Impact of Psychotherapeutics on Anxiety and Depression in Newly Detected Cancer Patients

Background: Cancer patients face great psychological burden due to their disease and its treatment which can negatively impact their overall health and may impact treatment outcome. The psychiatric interventions used are of three types: psychopharmacological agent, psychotherapy and a combination of both. Objective: To determine and compare the impact of different psychotherapeutic interventions on anxiety and depression in newly detected cancer patients. Methods: 71 newly detected cancer patients having diagnosis of anxiety or depression and who were prescribed with a psychotherapeutic intervention were enrolled. The scores for HAM -A and HAM -D were recorded at baseline and at week 6 and the impact of the different interventions were studied and compared. Result: With psychopharmacological agents the mean HAM -A reduced from 11.5 to 7.5 and HAM -D score reduced from 16.4 to 13.0. With psychotherapy the mean HAM -A score reduced from 9.45 to 6.27 and HAM -D score reduced from 10.6 to 9.85. With combination treatment, HAM -D score reduced from 22 to 6. The p -value for comparison between the three interventions for depression from baseline to week 6 was 0.045924 but for anxiety it was 0.9804. Conclusion: There was statistically significant decrease in mean score for both depression and anxiety with all three interventions. On comparison of the mean score from baseline to week 6 of the three interventions, we found that combinations therapy is more effective than psychopharmacological therapy followed by psychotherapy. This comparison was statistically significant in depression but not in anxiety.