Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and Washington University in St. Louis say that for patients awaiting a lung transplant, telephone-based counseling is a Godsend .
In the study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, the researchers say that although the counseling made no difference to survival rates or physical functioning in these patients, the quality of life did improve a lot.The researchers say that such sessions appear to equip patients with the coping skills while they are tensely waiting for a donor lung.
'Our findings demonstrate that psychological interventions can be effectively delivered over the telephone to extremely sick patients who are generally not thought to require or to be able to benefit from mental health services,' said study leader Duke psychologist James Blumenthal.
