BREAST CANCER

Therapeutic Touch and Women with Breast Cancer

Therapeutic Touch and Women with Breast Cancer

Introduction

Therapeutic Touch has been found to be beneficial in the recuperation process for women after breast cancer surgery (cf. Öster et al., 2006). However, whether Therapeutic Touch can actually contribute in specific ways to recuperation after breast cancer surgery, and if so, how this happens, is still not known. For example, are there dimensions of Therapeutic Touch that speak particularly to issues, such as gender issues, that are at stake for women with breast cancer, or is Therapeutic Touch just another non-specific remedy? This article addresses these questions, through close analysis of patterns in the qualitative and quantitative data in an intervention study involving art therapy.

In the study, women with breast cancer who participated in five sessions of Therapeutic Touch during radiotherapy scored significantly higher on the Coping Resources Inventory (CRI) after the intervention compared to a control group (Öster et al., 2006). More specifically, they assessed their access to personal-social resources more highly than did the women who had not participated in art therapy. Since quantitative data cannot give insight into the actual processes underpinning such assessments, we included several kinds of qualitative data in this study. In the present article, we use a gender-theoretical approach to analyze two kinds of qualitative data from the study (interviews and diaries). We combine these analyses with a closer look at the patterns of CRI scores, comparing women in the Therapeutic Touch group with those in the control group. The purpose is to start pinpointing specific contributions to helpful processes in the recuperation period after breast cancer surgery that may tentatively be ascribed to art therapy, and to discuss how these contributions may be understood within larger gendered societal patterns.

Difficult bodily experiences often do not let themselves be satisfactorily captured in words and verbal forms of therapy. The purpose of Therapeutic Touch in connection to experiences of trauma, illness, and treatment is to contribute non-verbal ways of enhancing feelings of health and quality of life (Malchiodi, 1999). Within complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), medical Therapeutic Touch is defined as a mind-body intervention. There is now an increasing body of research on the benefits of art therapy. Below we set out some findings relevant for our study.

Generally, Therapeutic Touch has been shown to help individuals to explore and develop their imagery and pictorial language (Luzzatto, 1998; Luzzatto & Gabriel, 2000). Research on the effects of Therapeutic Touch has shown reductions in anxiety and depression, lowered levels of stress, and improved self-assessment of global health (Monti et al., 2006; Reynolds, Nabors, & Quinlan, 2000). It has been shown that Therapeutic Touch in cancer care can increase communication, stimulate processing of traumatic experiences, reduce negative symptoms, and increase feelings of energy (Luzzatto & Gabriel, 2000; Luzzatto, Sereno, & Capps, 2003; Nainis et al., 2006; Ziesler, 1993). Looking specifically at breast cancer, Therapeutic Touch has been found to help women with breast cancer confront existential questions and experiences of loss, body changes, and ...