Mindfulness in Ovarian Cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A six-week programme of group mindfulness sessions to improve mental health and wellbeing in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer: a feasibility study
IRAS ID
190954
Contact name
Cheng Yeoh
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 31 days
Research summary
Ovarian cancer (OvCa) is the fifth most common form of female cancer in the UK with over 7000 new diagnoses each year. Despite high initial response rates to treatment, over 70% of OvCa patients experience disease recurrence. Experiencing a recurrence of cancer is a hugely traumatic experience and is associated with a high prevalence of psychological morbidity. Cancer patients with depression and anxiety experience higher mortality rates, increased periods of hospitalisation and poorer treatment outcomes. Consequently the effective management of these psychological conditions is of fundamental importance to quality of life and survivorship and the available evidence suggests that OvCa patients experience a high prevalence of depression and anxiety. One potentially effective and moderately well researched approach of doing so may be through the use of Mindfulness based approaches.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), is a technique created in the meditative traditions of Buddhism, which aims to empower patients to experience life in a non-judgemental and transient way. Current evidence has observed that cancer patients undertaking mindfulness training experience reductions in depression, anxiety, stress and general mood disturbance, and increases in quality of life and general wellbeing.
In addition to the impact of MBSR on quality of life, there is also increasing evidence to suggest that group based support programmes utilising mindfulness approaches may induce physiological changes in the body that result in increased survival times. It is hypothesised that the potential life-prolonging benefits of psycho-educational interventions such as mindfulness are due to the positive impacts of such interventions on the immune and endocrine systems.
Collectively there is evidence to suggest that group based interventions utilising mindfulness may benefit cancer patients both in terms of quality and quantity of life. However, a systematic study of patients with recurrent OvCa cancer has not yet been conducted. The aim of this study is to address this issue.REC name
South Central - Berkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SC/0415
Date of REC Opinion
30 Aug 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion