It can be stated from the previous research that positive emotions should allow to better health outcomes in sick populations. The aim of the present work is to know the state-of-the-art of how positive affect relates with quality of life in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients, as well as to give some guidelines to develop more efficacious psychological interventions in CRC patients. This review describes a search of published literature through January 2001 to December of 2011 on the Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge, Psycho Inf and Cochrane databases using publications that contain positive emotions, positive affect, psychological interventions, health outcomes, quality of life and cancer. These articleswere classified into two groups: a) “descriptive papers” b) “interventional studies”. Results from “descriptive papers” suggest that positive affect (PA) was significantly associated with greater levels of general health, better social functioning, benefit finding, positive changes, low depression, less anxiety and greater psychological well-being. PA also increases when different activities are developed. The overall results from interventional studies suggest that the interventionsdescribed can be recommended for improving patient´s levels of positive affect. The present review offers some suggestions which could be useful for CRC patients.
