Int J Cancer Manag. 2020 January; 13(1):e96069. Published online 2019 December 28. doi: 10.5812/ijcm.96069. Research Article Quality of Life and Hope Assessment in Women with Breast Cancer After Poetry Therapy as a Psychotherapy Method: A 6-Month Follow-Up Study Pouran Daboui 1 , Mohammad Esmaeil Akbari 1, * , Maryam Khayamzadeh 1 , Siavash Moradi 2 , Maryam Nouri 1 and Maedeh Rezaei 3 1 Cancer Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 2 Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Center, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran 3 Gorgan Branch, Isalmic Azad University, Gorgan, Iran * Corresponding author: Cancer Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Email: profmeakbari@gmail.com Received 2019 July 06; Revised 2019 November 02; Accepted 2019 November 04. Abstract Background: Quality of life in patients with cancer is an important issue. It affects different aspects of the patients’ life. Supportive group therapy helps the majority of women with breast cancer to treat their disease and decrease the recurrence of the disease. Group poetry therapy, as a safe method, can be used to increase the quality of life of patients. Objectives: We designed this study to evaluate the effect of poetry therapy on the quality of life of patients with cancer. Methods: A total of 91 participants were divided into the poetry therapy group (n = 31) and the control group (n = 60). Six ses- sions of weekly poetry therapy were held. Miller Hope scale, Quality-of-Life Questionnaire Core 30 (QLQ-C30), and Quality of Life Questionnaires-Breast 23 (QLQ-BR23) were fulfilled by patients before, 1 week, and 2 and 6 months after the intervention. Results: Poetry therapy increased hope based on Miller Hope scale 1 week, 8 weeks, and 6 months after the intervention (P = 0.001). The improvement of the functional item of QLQ-BR23 and QLQ-C30 was significant in poetry therapy in comparison with the control group at the end of the study (P = 0.001). The change of side effect items does not differ over the course of the study (P > 0.05). Conclusions: Group poetry therapy can be a good psychotherapy way to increase the quality of life of patients with breast cancer. Keywords: Poetry Therapy, Breast Cancer, QLQ-C30, QLQ-BR23 1. Background Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer among women and accounts for about 31% of all women cancers (1). An important issue in health care is the quality of life of patients with cancer due to the high economic burden of cancer in society. The life of many patients with cancer has been impaired due to physical and psychological prob- lems. Moreover, a long period of the disease and follow- ing treatment for months and years impact the different aspects of their life such as their social and family life (2). At the initiation of the treatment, most women experience psychological problems, which interfere with their quality of life (3). Women with breast cancer have a high level of distress and depression; it often happens 6 months after the diagnosis and lasts for many years (4, 5). Quality of life includes physical actions, psychological condition (level of distress and depression), and social sup- port. Chemotherapy has the most effect on the quality of life of patients with cancer. Survival and tumor size were traditionally two main measurements of assessing medi- cal outcomes. Today, different questionnaires are used to evaluate responses to treatment and screening for psycho- logical problems. The assessment of the quality of life can help to predict prognosis, decision-making about treat- ment, patient monitoring, designing an intervention, and effort with less cost (6). Supportive group therapy helps the majority of women with breast cancer to treat their disease and de- crease the recurrence of the disease. Over 20 years, group therapy has been examined for patients with breast cancer. The supportive-expressive method has many advantages for patients (7). In previous studies, it was shown that young and highly-distressed patients received the greatest benefits from this method at the start of the treatment. Creative modalities such as poems, drawings, and songs are helpful to express feelings and experiences. Poetry therapy is using pre-existing poems to evoke patients to Copyright © 2019, Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.