Abstract： Objective To study the effects and importance of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT)on the psychological status and life quality of patients with tongue carcinoma after operation.Methods A total of 64 tongue cancer patients randomly divided into experiment group (n =32) and control group (n =32),routine nursing was given to the control group,while mental nursing of REBT was given to the patients of experiment group,including deeply conversation,debate about the unreasonable conviction,reasonable emotion imagination technique and homework of cognition etc.Respectively symptom check list-90 (SCL-90) and World Health Organization quality of life-100(WHOQOL-100) were adopted to evaluate the mental condition and life quality before and after the mental nursing.Results After intervention,the improved scores of anxiety,interpersonal relationship,and antagonism of experiment group were significantly better than that of control group [(0.77 ±0.38) vs (0.48 ±0.42),(0.32 ±0.39) vs (0.12 ±0.35),(0.22 ±0.39) vs (0.02 ±0.30) ; P ＜0.05)].In experiment group,the total average score of WHOQOL-100,and the factors scores such as psychology,independence,social relation and mental support and so on were significantly improved than that of control group (t =19.71,22.37,16.55,8.62,7.61,respectively ; P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The reasonable emotion therapy can obviously alleviate the anxiety and depression of tongue cancer sufferers which caused by the illness condition,and it also can improve the sufferers' mental status,improve the living quality of them.