Iranian Journal of

Introduction: Breast cancer and the type of treatment in these women can affect their sexual function and intimacy. Unsuccessful sexual interaction is one of the factors that lead to low sexual self-esteem. This research aimed at studying the efficacy of four-factor psychotherapy (therapeutic relationship, expectancy to therapy, increasing awareness and behavior regulation) on increasing sexual self-esteem and its five subscales (skill, attractiveness, control, moral judgment and adaptiveness) in breast cancer survivors.

Methods: A semi-experimental study was conducted with pre-test/post-test control group design and 2/5 months follow up. The research population included married breast cancer survivors who referred to Shohada-e Tajrish hospital in 2015. The research samples involved 30 survivors who selected available and randomly assigned into two groups of 15, a control group and an experimental group. The research instruments included sexual self-esteem inventory for women (SSEI-W) (1996) that administered to both groups as pre-test, post-test and follow-up. Four-factor psychotherapy program performed in experimental group for
10-weekly 90 minute sessions and data was analyzed using analysis of covariance.

Results: four-factor psychotherapy led to significant effect on increasing women sexual
self- esteem and control and moral judgment subscales and this significance remained unchanged to the 2/5 months follow-up about control and moral judgment.

Conclusion: four-factor psychotherapy is effective on increasing sexual self-esteem and its two subscales (control and moral judgment) on breast cancer survivors.