Complementary treatment for women with breast cancer: a psychomotor therapy approach

Abstract

Women with breast cancer face a diversity of physical, psychological, and social changes that affect their health and well-being across the different stages of the cancer journey, including treatment and survival. Moreover, breast cancer often results in greater distress than any other neoplasm, challenging women's body, identity, and quality of life. Given the multiplicity of mind-body related problems that may confront women with breast cancer, psychomotor therapy is a valuable therapeutic approach for these women. This chapter presents a framework based on psychological and neurobiological research to understand how a mind-body approach as psychomotor therapy improves cancer-related symptoms, readjusts body schema, body image and identity, thus contributing to women with breast cancer's health and well-being. Two intervention programs, uniquely designed as a complementary approach of medical care for women in the treatment and survival phases, also described. The impact of these programs on health and quality of life indicators of women with breast cancer also presented.