Cancer Patients Get a Lift from Meaning-Centered Therapy Groups
July 15th, 2009
Therapy groups are a featured staple of many modern hospitals and cancer centers, and are aimed at helping those diagnosed with cancer discuss their feelings and find suport from fellow clients. But a psychiatrist with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York has started to offer those with cancer something a bit different. The hospital’s meaning-centered therapy groups, which form the basis for an intensive academic study, provide a space for talking about life’s most important themes and moments, encouraging clients to take advantage of the time they have left to grow and live well.
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Comments
Seems like a lot to focus on when one already has a potentially terminal illness and could simply benefit from the support a group offers. but honestly, this is not my area of expertise, and besides peoples’ needs differ.
Isn’t having a focus other than the illness itself good? Support groups are all about the cancer. This is not. The cancer patient remembers they are more than their illness and always have been. Their lives pre-cancer weren’t lived in vain. After diagnosis, it doesn’t have to be. That’s the message I get from what this group does.
I am glad so many cancer facilities have started this. Not many people can cope with a terminal illness. A friend of mine a spinster in her late 50s was recently diagnosed with colon cancer. She is attending a support group and is definitely more positive than most of us.
Oh my goodness what an inspiring program! A friend of mine had cancer five years ago. Her long term bf dumped her when she was diagnosed. He “couldn’t handle losing her” he said. He made her feel she WAS cancer and nothing else. What a coward. She’s in remission.
my partner has now been battling ovarian cancer for several years yet she always manages to look on the bright side and keep her chin up and I sometimes wonder how she manages to do that when I feel like our world is falling apart. But she like this therapy group looks for the good in life instead of the bad and has focused on making the most of her time that she has left here on earth. She and others like her are such an inspiration to us all.
This is such good news. I’m sure this will help many people suffering with Cancer. wish this could be available nationwide.
I have been dealing with cancer patients for several years doing emotional based therapy, accessing cellular memories associated with the illness. This has proved most effective. I also do a lot of group facilitation in transpersonal psychology practices and find mind/body/spirit integration helps a great deal.
I have loved this idea from the moment that I first heard about it! There are too many times when patients with terminal diseases like cancer are often reduced to nothing more than their disease. That is what comes to define them and that is so not fair to everything else that they have done in their lifetimes. What happens to all of their other accomplishments and achievements? It is as if they go away from the moment that they are given that diagnosis and that is all other people are able to remember about them and sometimes all that they come to remember about themselves. Talk sessions like these help everyone involved in these cases remember that these are people who are creative and caring and are about so much more than the disease which is claiming them. It gives them the opportunity to claim their lives and their minds again, and that is such a wonderful thing.
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