Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2010 Apr;25(4):401-15.
doi: 10.1080/08870440802660884.

Enhanced counselling for women undergoing BRCA1/2 testing: Impact on knowledge and psychological distress-results from a randomised clinical trial

Pagona Roussi  1 , Kerry Anne Sherman, Suzanne Miller, Joanne Buzaglo, Mary Daly, Alan Taylor, Eric Ross, Andrew Godwin
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Enhanced counselling for women undergoing BRCA1/2 testing: Impact on knowledge and psychological distress-results from a randomised clinical trial

Pagona Roussi et al. Psychol Health. 2010 Apr.

Abstract

This randomised controlled trial evaluated the impact of an enhanced counselling (EC) intervention on knowledge about the heritability of breast and ovarian cancer and distress, as a function of BRCA test result, among high-risk women. Before deciding about whether or not to undergo genetic testing, participants were randomly assigned to the EC intervention (N = 69), designed to promote cognitive and affective processing of cancer risk information (following the standard individualised counselling session), or to the control condition (N = 65), which involved standard individualised counselling followed by a general health information session to control for time and attention. Women in the EC group exhibited greater knowledge than women in the control group, 1 week after the intervention. Further, at the affective level, the intervention was found to be the most beneficial for women testing positive: specifically 1 week after test result disclosure, women in the intervention group who tested positive experienced lower levels of distress than women in the control group who tested positive. The findings suggest that the design of counselling aids should include a component that explicitly activates the individual's cognitive-affective processing system.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Study Assessment Flowchart
Figure 2
Figure 2
Participant Flowchart a GHI: General Health Information group; EC: Enhanced Counseling Group.
Figure 3
Figure 3
One-week Post-result Intrusive Ideation as a Function of Intervention Group and Test Result (N = 134)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bish A, Sutton S, Jacobs C, Levene S, Ramirez A. No news is (not necessarily) good news: Impact of preliminary results for BRCA1 mutation searches. Genetics in Medicine. 2002;4:353–358. - PubMed
    1. Borkovec TD, Stoeber J. Worry: a cognitive phenomenon intimately linked to affective, physiological and interpersonal behavioral processes. Cognitive Therapy and Research. 1998;8:561–576.
    1. Braithwaite D, Emery J, Walter F, Prevast AT, Sutton S. Psychological impact of genetic counseling for familial cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the National Cancer Institute. 2004;96(2):122–133. - PubMed
    1. Claes E, Evers-Kiebooms G, Boogaerts A, Decruyenaere M, Denayer L, Legius E. Diagnostic genetic testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer in cancer patients: women's looking back on the pre-test period and a psychological evaluation. Genetic Testing. 2004;8:13–21. - PubMed
    1. Daly M. NCCN practice guidelines: Genetics/familial high-risk cancer screening. Oncology. 1999;13:161–183.

Publication types