Effects of Psychosocial Interventions With Adult Cancer Patients: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Experiments

Meta-analytic methods were used to synthesize the results of published randomized, controlled-outcome studies of psychosocial interventions with adult cancer patients. Forty-five studies reporting 62 treatment-control comparisons were identified. Samples were predominantly White, female, and from the United States. Beneficial effect size d s were.24 for emotional adjustment measures,.19 for functional adjustment measures,.26 for measures of treatment-and disease-related symptoms, and.28 for compound and global measures. The effect size of.17 found for medical measures was not statistically significant for the few reporting studies. Effect sizes for treatment-control comparisons did not significantly differ among several categories of treatment: behavioral interventions, nonbehavioral counseling and therapy, informational and educational methods, organized social support provided by other patients, and other nonhospice interventions.