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 controlModerate 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

people took part

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

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

Compared withwaiting-list control

Measured withsubjective 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
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