Evaluation of the Added Value of Logotherapy in the Psychological Support of Patients With Primary Breast Cancer

The diagnosis of breast cancer in a woman can cause major psychological trauma with many destructive effects in all areas of life.

Dealing with this profound distress is often difficult, sometimes poorly defined between different professionals (psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, proponents of alternative therapies), leading to highly variable and difficult-to-measure results.

Since the first French cancer plan (2003/2007), facilities offering cancer care have been legally required to have a notification and support system in place. This consists of offering patients a range of supportive care throughout their cancer treatment (psychotherapy, physical activities, dietetics, pain management, etc.).

In recent years, logotherapy has been offered as part of psychological care. Logotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on meaning, which has been offered for many years and aims to help patients create or discover meaning in their lives. Meaning serves as motivation to continue living despite illness by placing this ordeal in the context of existence.

Suffering can thus be transformed into opportunity. The use of logotherapy gives the suffering person the ability to take an active part in their treatment and helps them to mobilize their personal resources to keep the disease at bay, stabilize it, or cure it.

Several studies conducted on women with breast or gynecological cancer have shown that logotherapy can reduce the symptoms of traumatic stress and increase their ability to find meaning in their lives. However, these studies have certain limitations because they are not randomized.

In order to evaluate the short- and medium-term benefits of logotherapy in patients diagnosed with primary breast cancer, we propose a prospective, comparative, randomized study.