A randomised controlled trial of a brief cognitive behavioural intervention for men who have hot flushes following prostate cancer treatment (MANCAN). By Stefanopoulou et al. 2015
Key sentence from the paper: “…CBT appears to be a safe and effective intervention to help prostate cancer patients undergoing ADT to manage troublesome [hot flushes and night sweats].”
For the full abstract, see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25753889
Commentary: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be helpful to some extent for women suffering from the menopausal hot flashes. So would CBT benefit men on ADT?
The CBT intervention proved to be effective out to 32 weeks, but only for daytime hot flashes, and not for night sweats. Furthermore, no significant differences were found in the amount of sweating between the intervention and control groups.
It's worth noting that the individuals reporting hot flashes scored higher than prostate cancer patients in general on measures of depression and anxiety. Their distress could be directly due to hot flashes or due to some other factor in their life. The modest improvement from the psychological intervention suggests that controlling psychological distress in general can to some extent help control the distress from hot flashes, if not the hot flashes themselves.
Stefanopoulou E, Yousaf O, Grunfeld EA, Hunter MS. 2015. A randomised controlled trial of a brief cognitive behavioural intervention for men who have hot flushes following prostate cancer treatment (MANCAN). Psychooncology. 9 March 2015 [Epub ahead of print]