Integrating Spirituality Into a Group Psychological Therapy Program for Cancer Patients
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Although the importance of spiritual issues to people with cancer is by now widely acknowledged, there has been almost no research on the value of interventions specifically designed to enhance the spiritual experience of these patients. The present report describes an exploratory study on the effects of a brief psychoeducational course emphasizing spiritual aspects of coping and healing. METHODS: Ninety-seven patients with various types and stages of cancer took part in the 8-session course as the third stage in a progressive, stepwise program of support and psychological education. Standard psychometric tests were administered at entry, 8 weeks, and 6 months. Written home assignments, returned by participants, provided an insight into their experience. RESULTS: Significant improvements in scores were found immediately following the intervention; by 6 months, however, these improvements above entry level had declined to about half the 8-week value. In their written homework, patients grappled with such issues as doubts about the existence of a god, judgment and forgiveness, guilt, projection, self-importance, and the meaning of love. As the course progressed, many claimed to be better able to accept their condition and to experience an enhanced sense of meaning in their lives, coupled with a heightened appreciation for the events of everyday life and less tendency to conflict with others. CONCLUSIONS: These preliminary findings indicate that further, more rigorous investigation would be worthwhile and support the growing view that addressing spiritual issues within the framework of group therapy can be of great benefit to people with cancer.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".