Meaning-centered Group Psychotherapy Intervention In The Sense Of Meaning Of Life In Patients With Advanced Cancer

The meaning of life refers to the fact that life may be experienced as meaningful by individuals when life is considered to have a meaning beyond triviality or transience,a purpose or a coherence beyond chaos.Existentialist psychologists point out that the meaning of life is often a prominent theme when human beings are pushed into a life that may be meaningless.Terminal cancer brings patients into this situation,and psychologists call it "awakening to a marginal experience." Research has found that cancer can cause emotional distress and affect an individual’s quality of life.Research has shown that group psychological interventions aimed at the meaning of life can counter individual psychological pain while increasing the sense of belonging,providing an emotional catharsis and increasing empathy among patients,which are critical in the treatment of advanced cancer.However,there are few studies on group psychotherapy to improve the sense of life meaning of terminal cancer in China.Therefore,this study first investigated the status of life meaning,quality of life and negative emotions in patients with advanced cancer,on the basis of this,based on Breitbart’s meaning-centered group psychotherapy(MCGP)intervention theme and main content,the detailed intervention plan was designed in accordance with the cultural characteristics of Chinese people who attach importance to family relations and are unwilling to talk about death,through to the patients randomized to intervene,to investigate the effect of MCGP on the sense of meaning of life in patients with advanced cancer.Study 1 conducted a questionnaire survey on general demographic data,disease data,sense of life meaning,anxiety,depression,quality of life,and suicidal ideation of patients with advanced cancer(N = 119).The results showed that the sense of life meaning was positively correlated with the quality of life,and negatively correlated with suicidal ideation,anxiety,depression,etc.The study subjects reached the criteria of critical score of depressive symptoms in 26.05% of the patients,and reached the criteria of critical score of suicidal ideation in 33.61% of the patients.Study 2 recruited 30 patients from study 1 and randomly divided them into two groups: MCGP and CAU.The results show that compared with CAU,MCGP can effectively improve the sense of life meaning of patients.Compared with before the intervention,MCGP couldeffectively improve the quality of life and sense of life meaning of patients,and showed continuous improvement of depression,quality of life and sense of life meaning in the follow-up after 2 months.The above results indicate that the sense of life meaning of patients with advanced cancer is worthy of attention.In the context of Chinese culture,MCGP is an effective intervention measure for the sense of life meaning,quality of life and negative emotions of patients with advanced cancer.