September is national ovarian cancer awareness month, but Dr. Ann Rost, associate professor of psychology at Missouri State University, deals with the effects of it all year. She’s not looking for the cure, though; she’s looking to improve quality of life for the late-stage ovarian cancer patients she sees in therapy.

Rost discovered that late-stage ovarian cancer patients achieved a better quality of life when they participated in a modern therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) rather than traditional therapy. By learning to accept difficult thoughts and emotions after the diagnosis, the women were better able to cope with their situation and less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression.

“There was nothing to change about their thoughts,” she said, “as they were being realistic in their fears and concerns about their health conditions. Telling these cancer patients to think differently about their current situation felt like it invalidated their whole experience.”

Rost added that in the short run, cancer patients might feel better avoiding thoughts and cues about their health status, but if they do not think about it, they miss out on opportunities to engage in meaningful activity such as spending time with family, addressing relationships, and investigating and planning health care options and
end-of-life outcomes.

Accept, commit, repeat

The first step Rost uses during ACT is to learn what strategies the patient has tried in order to cope with the situation and whether the actions have worked. If the individual still feels bad, Rost takes a values inventory to find out what is most important to the patient, and then she determines whether that person has been living in a way that matches his or her values.

Rost stressed that even if the individual feels sad or mad and being connected is hard due to deteriorating health, the patient must commit that this is what he or she wants.

“Most end-stage cancer patients move quickly emotionally and get in there and make changes in a hurry,” Rost said.

One patient who had end-stage ovarian cancer was so invested in never feeling bad that she put a towel over her head during treatment so she would not see other sick people. She stayed in her room and would not answer the phone, which cut her off from her social support and made her life “smaller.” ACT enabled the woman to have meaningful interactions with her family at a time when that really mattered.

For more information, contact Rost at (417) 836-5406, or read her full story at Mind’s Eye.