The Effectiveness of Group and Individual Training in Emotional Freedom Techniques for Patients in Remission from Melanoma: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Randomized trial 👥 53 participants ⚖️ vs. waiting-list control 📈 Cohen's 0.32 (small) Moderate rigor ✓ Source-checked 📍 Israel

In plain English. Fifty-three melanoma survivors — people who'd finished treatment at least six months earlier — were split into three groups: tapping together in a group, tapping one-on-one with an instructor, or a waiting list. Both tapping formats helped people feel calmer during sessions and better understand how to reduce their cancer-recurrence risk, and over 80% said they were satisfied with real, positive changes. However, on measures like ongoing fear of the cancer coming back, the tapping groups didn't significantly outperform the waiting list — an honest result worth noting. Group tapping worked about as well as one-on-one sessions, which matters for making it more accessible and affordable.

What they found

Cohen's = 0.32

a small effect · on illness coherence (IPQ-R subscale, higher=better), group-EFT vs waitlist (betwee

small moderate large

0 0.5 0.8 2.5

Fifty-three melanoma survivors — people who'd finished treatment at least six months earlier — were split into three groups: tapping together in a group…

53 melanoma survivors were randomized to Group EFT (n=16), Individual EFT (n=18), or a waiting-list control (n=19), with weekly sessions for 4 weeks; both EFT formats significantly improved participants' understanding of how to prevent recurrence and spiritual wellbeing, and produced significant decreases in within-session distress (SUDs), though fear of recurrence and general affect did not significantly differ from control; over 80% of EFT participants reported positive changes and satisfaction, with group and individual formats performing similarly.

How the study worked

Who took part adults in remission from cutaneous melanoma (stage T1a-T2a), at least 6 months post-diagnosis and not in active treatment (n=53)

What they did In a randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly assigned to receive tapping or a comparison condition, then measured and compared.

Compared with waiting-list control

Measured with subjective units of distress (SUDs), perceptions of cancer recurrence, spiritual wellbeing, fear of recurrence, affect

💡 Where this could help

Picture a melanoma survivor, cancer-free for months but still quietly afraid it will come back, unsure who to talk to about that fear once active treatment ends. If group-delivered tapping continues to work as well as one-on-one sessions, cancer survivorship programs could offer it far more cheaply and to far more people at once — and because it's something survivors can keep doing themselves after the group program ends, it could remain useful long after formal support winds down.

🔬 What to study next

Since fear of recurrence itself didn't beat control despite within-session distress easing, the next step is tracking whether repeated sessions produce a cumulative dampening of the physiological fear-of-recurrence response — cortisol awakening response, inflammatory markers like IL-6 and CRP tied to chronic survivorship stress, and actigraphy-measured sleep. Testing scaled telehealth group delivery across a larger multi-site oncology cohort would also show whether the within-session relief compounds into durable change with more practice.

The full record

Design	Randomized trial
Participants	53 people
Population	adults in remission from cutaneous melanoma (stage T1a-T2a), at least 6 months post-diagnosis and not in active treatment
Comparison group	waiting-list control
Effect size	Cohen's d = 0.32 — on illness coherence (IPQ-R subscale, higher=better), group-EFT vs waitlist (between-group) at post-intervention; computed from Table 2 (group-EFT 3.69±0.57 n=16 vs control 3.46±0.84 n=18). A small, non-primary outcome with baseline imbalance; the more clinically relevant fear-of-recurrence outcome showed no significant group difference
Outcome measures	subjective units of distress (SUDs), perceptions of cancer recurrence, spiritual wellbeing, fear of recurrence, affect
Journal	Healthcare (Basel)
Year	2025
Country	Israel
Language	English
Method	EFT / Tapping
Publication type	Study / trial
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Lazarov, A., Church, D., Shidlo, N., & Benyamini, Y. (2025). The Effectiveness of Group and Individual Training in Emotional Freedom Techniques for Patients in Remission from Melanoma: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Healthcare (Basel). https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13121420

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/Tapping. Explore more studies on Cancer & Serious Illness