The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) released updated guidelines for treating anxiety and depression in adult cancer survivors late last month.
Since the last guidelines, published in 2014, screening and assessment for depression and anxiety have improved, and a large new evidence base has emerged. To ensure the most up-to-date recommendations, a group of experts spanning psychology, psychiatry, medical and surgical oncology, internal medicine, and nursing convened to review the current literature on managing depression and anxiety. The review included 61 studies — 16 meta-analyses, 44 randomized controlled trials, and one systematic review — published between 2013 and 2021.
“The purpose of this guideline update is to gather and examine the evidence published since the 2014 guideline…[with a] focus on management and treatment only.” The overall goal is to provide “the most effective and least resource-intensive intervention based on symptom severity” for patients with cancer, the experts write.
The new clinical practice guideline addresses the following question: What are the recommended treatment approaches in the management of anxiety and/or depression in survivors of adult cancer?
After an extensive literature search and analysis, the study was published online on April 19 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The expert panel’s recommendations fell into three broad categories — general management principles, treatment and care options for depressive symptoms, and treatment and care options for anxiety symptoms — with the guidelines for managing depression and anxiety largely mirroring each other.
The authors caution, however, that the guidelines “were developed in the context of mental health care being available and may not be applicable within other resource settings.”
Here are some of the key updated guidelines.
General Management Principals
All patients with cancer along with their caregivers, family members, or trusted confidants should be offered information and resources on depression and anxiety. The panel gave this a “strong” recommendation but provided the caveat that the “information should be culturally informed and linguistically appropriate and can include a conversation between clinician and patient.”
Clinicians should select the most effective and least intensive intervention based on symptom severity when selecting treatment — what the panelists referred to as a stepped-care model. History of psychiatric diagnoses or substance use as well as prior responses to mental health treatment are some of the factors that may inform treatment choice.
For patients experiencing both depression and anxiety symptoms, treatment of depressive symptoms should be prioritized.
When referring a patient for further evaluation or care, clinicians “should make every effort to reduce barriers and facilitate patient follow-through,” the authors write. And healthcare professionals should regularly assess the treatment responses for patients receiving psychological or pharmacological interventions.
Overall, the treatments should be “supervised by a psychiatrist, and primary care or oncology providers work collaboratively with a nurse care manager to provide psychological interventions and monitor treatment compliance and outcomes,” the panelists write. “This type of collaborative care is found to be superior to usual care and is more cost-effective than face-to-face and pharmacologic treatment for depression.”
Treatment and Care Options for Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms
For patients with moderate to severe depression symptoms, the panelists again stressed that clinicians should provide “culturally informed and linguistically appropriate information.” This information may include the frequency and symptoms of depression as well as signs these symptoms may be getting worse, with contact information for the medical team provided.
Among patients with moderate symptoms, clinicians can offer patients a range of individual or group therapy options, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), behavioral activation, mindfulness-based stress reduction, or structured physical activity and exercise. For patients with severe symptoms of depression, clinicians should offer individual therapy with one of these four treatment options: CBT, behavioral activation, mindfulness-based stress reduction, or interpersonal therapy.
The panelists offered almost identical recommendations for patients with anxiety, except mindfulness-based stress reduction was an option for patients with severe symptoms.
Clinicians can also provide pharmacologic options to treat depression or anxiety in certain patients, though the panelists provided the caveat that evidence for pharmacologic management is weak.
“These guidelines make no recommendations about any specific pharmacologic regimen being better than another,” the experts wrote. And “patients should be warned of potential harm or adverse effects.”
Overall, the panelists noted that, as highlighted in the 2014 ASCO guideline, the updated version continues to stress the importance of providing education on coping with stress, anxiety, and depression.
And “for individuals with elevated symptoms, validation and normalizing patients’ experiences is crucial,” the panelists write.
Although the timing of screening is not the focus of this updated review, the experts recognized that “how and when patients with cancer and survivors are screened are important determinants of timely management of anxiety and depression.”
And unlike the prior guideline, “pharmacotherapy is not recommended as a first-line treatment, neither alone nor in combination,” the authors say.
Overall, the panelists emphasize how widespread the mental health care crisis is and that problems accessing mental healthcare remain. “The choice of intervention to offer patients facing such obstacles should be based on shared decision making, taking into account availability, accessibility, patient preference, likelihood of adverse events, adherence, and cost,” the experts conclude.
J Clin Oncol. Published online April 19, 2023. Full text
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