A qualitative exploration of the lived experiences and perceived impact of a supportive-expressive group therapy on men living with gastrointestinal cancer
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background: This study seeks to understand the functioning of a gastrointestinal (GI) men-only Supportive-Expressive Group Therapy (SEGT) program over time by exploring (1) men's lived experiences with group process and (2) perceived group impact relevant to supportive/expressive goals. Methods: A convenience sample of patients with GI cancer attending an ongoing, men-only GI cancer SEGT was interviewed at 3 and 6 months from enrollment. A qualitative study design with mixed inductive and framework thematic analysis was used. Open-ended, semistructured interviews directed the exploration of group experiences over time. SEGT goals framed the inquiry toward exploring the perceived impact of the group. Results: Twenty-three men were interviewed at 3 months and 13 men at 6 months of intervention. Men pointed to an overall global satisfaction with group process and subjects discussed. The SEGT model provided a sex sensitive, safe, and mutually supportive outlet for expressing and normalizing participants' feelings and emotions. Three central themes emerged relevant to group experiences: (1) the role of social comparison, (2) the role of supportive-expressive exchanges, and (3) the role of the group format, composition, and facilitation. Feeling heard and validated accelerated a sense of belonging and facilitated emotional disclosure. SEGT contributed to re-evaluation of life values/goals, mitigation of existential anxiety, and mood improvement. Conclusions: Group participants perceived the SEGT as effective in addressing and mitigating emotional and existential concerns. Perceived benefits were consistent with SEGT goals. The findings offer groundwork for developing men-centered cancer support groups that foster emotional exploration and expressive disclosure through validation and acceptance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 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 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".