The Effectiveness of One-week Short-Term Life Review Interview on Spirituality of Terminally-ill Cancer Patients

Abstract

here is a growing incidence of cancer worldwide and meeting the spiritual needs of patients is a vital aspect of care. The primary existential concern of cancer patients is a “struggle to maintain self-identity,” and they easily lose self-identity because of serious illness. Moreover, individuals build life stories incorporating past events into an organized sequence, giving them a personal meaning. Terminally ill cancer patients often experience spiritual distress, which is defined as the impaired ability to experience and integrate meaning and purpose in life. It may be manifested as fear, nervousness, anxiety, hopelessness, suicidal thought, depression or despair. For those patients, Spiritual health is a buffer that reduces depression, helplessness, and hopelessness. The attributes of spiritual well-being, transcendence, hope, meaning, and dignity in terminally ill patients are closely related to pain control, QOL, and adaptation to and acceptance of loss. Indeed, spirituality can be an inner resource in helping patients find a new meaning in their existence by reevaluating their experience of illness, and recognize what ultimately matters most to them. Spirituality may provide “a context in which people can make sense of their lives, and feel whole, hopeful and peaceful even in the midst of life’s most serious challenges”. Also spirituality refers to “one’s striving for and experience of a connection with the essence of life of which the experiences of meaning in life and connectedness are central elements”. Spirituality is particularly relevant for patients suffering from life-threatening illness, especially at the end of life. Indeed; these patients may struggle with questions about mortality or the meaning of life that they had not considered before they became ill. Although some patients may turn to religion to meet their existential needs, others find relief through non-religious spiritual beliefs.