The Tapping Evidence Base
Cancer & Serious Illness · Stress & Cortisol

Effect of nursing application of emotion freedom technique on perceived stress, resilience and sexual satisfaction among women after mastectomy

Mohamed, A.F., Hamed, A.E.M., Mohamed, S.S.A. · BMC Nursing · 2025

Outcome study👥 112 participantsPreliminary✓ Source-checked📍 Egypt
In plain English. Mastectomy patients in Egypt did six weeks of EFT sessions and reported large drops in stress along with large gains in resilience and sexual satisfaction. The effect sizes reported are unusually large, which is common in single-group pre/post designs without a comparison group to rule out other explanations like time passing or extra nursing attention.

What they found

112
people took part

Perceived stress dropped from 32.42 to 17.27, resilience rose from 11.53 to 31.46, and sexual satisfaction rose from 17.03 to 31.00 after six EFT sessions (all p < 0.001), with strong correlations between stress, resilience, and sexual satisfaction.

How the study worked

Who took partEgyptian women who had undergone mastectomy, recruited from the Outpatient Oncology Clinic at Beni-Suef University Hospital (n=112)
What they didParticipants received tapping and were measured before and after, without a separate comparison group.
Measured withperceived stress scale, resilience scale, sexual satisfaction scale

💡 Where this could help

If findings like these hold up in larger trials, the promise is simple: a low-cost, self-administered tool that could reach people struggling with cancer & serious illness who can't easily access traditional care — at home, between appointments, or where there aren't enough clinicians to go around.

🔬 What to study next

The natural next step: a head-to-head trial against an established treatment like CBT, and a randomized controlled design.

The full record

DesignOutcome study
Participants112 people
PopulationEgyptian women who had undergone mastectomy, recruited from the Outpatient Oncology Clinic at Beni-Suef University Hospital
Outcome measuresperceived stress scale, resilience scale, sexual satisfaction scale
JournalBMC Nursing
Year2025
CountryEgypt
LanguageEnglish
MethodEFT / tapping
Publication typeStudy / trial
Verification✓ Confirmed against the primary source
Verification note. Article, authors (plus 2 additional not listed here), N=112, and raw pre/post means (32.42->17.27; 11.53->31.46; 17.03->31.00, all p<0.001) match verbatim. However, this record's Cohen's d values (3.2/2.8/2.5) were WRONG — the paper actually reports even larger effect sizes: d=5.785 (stress), 3.264 (resilience), 3.889 (sexual satisfaction). Corrected to the paper's true values below. Per editorial policy, effect sizes above ~d=3 are flagged as likely small-sample/single-group-design artifacts rather than being featured as straightforward large effects.

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Mohamed, A.F., Hamed, A.E.M., & Mohamed, S.S.A. (2025). Effect of nursing application of emotion freedom technique on perceived stress, resilience and sexual satisfaction among women after mastectomy. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-025-02977-2

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 · Stress & Cortisol

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THE TAPPING EVIDENCE BASE Cancer & Serious Illness 112 participants WHAT THEY FOUND Perceived stress dropped from 32.42 to17.27, resilience rose from 11.53 to 31.46,and sexual satisfaction rose from… Outcome study · 112 participants Mohamed · 2025 · evidence.thetappingsolution.com