Background
death, anxiety, cancer, psychiatric, depression
CANCER, DISEASE, ADVANCED CANCER, DISORDERS, ADVERSE EFFECTS, PATHOLOGY
Patients with advanced cancer have unmet needs in the financial, health system, health information, psychological, physical, and daily living domains. These unmet needs are associated with distress, depression, and anxiety in patients with advanced cancer [Depression in patients with advanced cancer leads to adverse effects such as impaired quality of life (QOL) [There is a general preference for psychotherapy in the most common psychiatric disorders, but also specifically for patients with cancer [Patients living with advanced cancer experience various types of psychological and social distress such as anxiety about worsening disease, fear of death, and hopelessness about life, which often lead to mental health problems such as depression and high risk of suicide [Behavioral activation (BA), developed as a psychotherapy for depression, aims to improve mood and rebuild life to regain purpose and value through the reuse of the patient’s inherently healthy aspects as well as human and social resources, rather than addressing the pathology of depression and negative thoughts and feelings, which had been the focus of previous psychotherapies. Many studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of BA in depression with a high level of evidence [To explore the applicability of BA to patients with cancer, we have developed a BA program for patients with cancer and tested the preliminary effectiveness in a pre-post study without a control group [This multicenter randomized controlled trial aims to examine the effectiveness of a BA program on depression in patients with advanced cancer compared to a wait-list control group (waiting group).