216 Background: Women diagnosed with breast cancer responded to an 80-question online assessment to determine their education, information, and support needs. All responses were self-reported, including those about treatment stage, emotional/psychological characteristics, and level of emotion experienced.

A total of 1,443 responses were analyzed. Responses from 776 women (53.8%) who reported participation in survivorship programs were compared to responses from 667 women (46.2%) who did not report participation. On a scale of none, low, moderate, or high, respondents rated the degree to which they experienced anxiety, fear, anger, worry, sadness, and confusion following treatment. Examination of histograms revealed that emotion ratings were not normally distributed. Therefore, differences in ratings between the two groups were tested using Mann-Whitney U analyses, a nonparametric alternative to the independent samples t-test.

Respondents who participated in survivorship programs reported significantly higher ratings of emotional experience for anxiety (p < .001), fear (p = .004), worry (p = .002), sadness (p < .001), and confusion (p = .005). A similar trend was observed for anger, which approached significance (p = .051). Overall, survivorship program participants reported more intense experiences of negative emotions following treatment than did non-participants.

Self-referral to survivorship programs may reflect continued patient concerns about diagnosis and prognosis, offering insights into patient populations with greater need for support following completion of treatment. Availability of programs and heterogeneity of disease characteristics and treatment may impact these results. The difference in ratings supports the importance of continued monitoring and evaluation of the emotional/psychological needs of women diagnosed with breast cancer following treatment, and especially of those women participating in survivorship programs.