A Group Work To Relieve The Psychological Pressure Of And Console The Relatives Of Terminal Cancer Patients

Cancer is one of the scariest topics, and a nightmare for happy families. Cancer patients are suffering physically from the diseases and facing the fear of death. Concurrently, their relatives, who are worrying about losing of patients, are raising huge amounts of funds for the patients’therapy. Thus, the relatives of cancer patients bear huge stresses in life, and are hit both physically and psychologically.Modern psychology believes that the individual encountering misfortunes or sadness will deny the facts after being shocked initially. The individual then gradually faces up to the bad news and starts to be experiencing agonies when the ambivalence is conquered. Later, angers substitute pains and guilt. At this stage, the individual starts to recall what experienced before, self-reflect, and slowly adapt to the changed lives. Thus, the individual’s life is rebuilt and recovered during psychologically reconstructing. The relatives of cancer patients who are experiencing huge stresses yearn for outside supports to help themselves and their families to pass this hard time. Thus, it is urgent to provide social psychological services to the relatives of cancer patients to relieve their psychological stresses.A group work to ease psychological stresses was designed on the base of the experience acquired in a hospice program in Ning Yang and the features and needs of the relatives of cancer patients. Theories such as psychological theory of seven stages of grief, theory of emotional therapy and the theory of social support, and conceptions and methodologies of social works were applied in designing this group work. This solution focuses on helping the relatives of cancer patients to release emotion and ease stresses though the group works. There are six group work activities in this solution. We hope to establish a support system among cancer patients, the relatives of these patients, social workers and medical professionals via mutual interactions and sharing experiences in the group work activities. We anticipate that these group activities could relieve these relatives’stresses, and alleviate their sorrows, anxieties, and low spirits. We also hope that these group work activities could help the patients’relatives to face family members’ separation and death in a right way. Eventually, we hope that the social support network of the patients’relatives will help them go through the difficult time in life...