Contradicting an old belief, new research released Sunday found that group therapy didn't prolong the lives of women with advanced cases of breast cancer.
The report in the journal Cancer found that support groups improved patients' quality of life and had beneficial effects on mood and pain, but it undercut what had been seen as the greatest potential benefit.
In 1989, a landmark study found that group therapy doubled the survival time of women with metastatic breast cancer. That conclusion spurred a proliferation of cancer support groups and fueled a debate about the effect of such therapy on the course of cancer.
Stanford University psychiatrist David Spiegel, who led both studies, said cancer treatments had improved in the last two decades, making it possible for most patients today to live longer without psychotherapy.
Spiegel said the latest study shouldn't discourage cancer patients from joining support groups, which count thousands of members and have become an accepted part of cancer care. The groups encourage participants to express fears, anger and depression; confront their doctors; and grieve for those in the group who have died.
Dr. David Kissane, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not connected to the study, said the latest report should end the decades-long debate.
"Group therapy is a great help to women, but it is time to debunk the myth that it extends survival," he said. "It does not."
Spiegel undertook the latest study to confirm his older report. Other researchers have attempted to replicate his findings, with conflicting results.
The latest study divided 125 women with advanced breast cancer into two groups: one that got weekly group therapy and educational materials and another that got only educational materials about the disease.
The median survival of all women in the study was 32.8 months, with no differences between the groups.
Spiegel said many of the life-extending drugs used to treat breast cancer today were not available when he began his first study in the 1970s. The drugs leave "less room for improvement" through group therapy, he said.
Society has become more accepting of cancer, making it possible for patients to find social and emotional support outside group therapy, Spiegel said. So the effect of such therapy may be less powerful today than 30 years ago when "cancer was a dirty word," he said.
