Dr Harvey Chochinov
“Tell me about your life” is the question more health care professionals should be asking cancer patients nearing the end of their life, according to a study recently funded by the Canadian Cancer Society.
Dignity Therapy, designed and developed by Manitobaresearcher Dr Harvey Chochinov, one of Canada’s leading palliative care experts, involves a 30-to-60 minute session between a patient and therapist.
Patients are invited to talk about issues that matter most to them or that they would most want remembered about their lives. Within 3 days of this tape-recorded session, an edited transcript is delivered to the patient. The patients are then invited to share the transcript with their family.
In a Society-funded clinical trial of Dignity Therapy involving 100 terminally ill cancer patients from Canadaand Australia, Dr Chochinov found that 91% of participants reported being satisfied or highly satisfied with Dignity Therapy and 81% of participants said the therapy had already helped, or would help, their families. When pre-and post-intervention surveys were compared, he found both suffering and depression were significantly reduced with this therapy.
“There are few drug-based therapies available that can lesson someone’s distress about death or reinforce their sense of worth as they near death,” says Dr Chochinov, a professor at the Universityof Manitobaand a researcher at CancerCare Manitoba. “Our study has shown that this relatively simple and straightforward psychotherapy can help patients attain the sense of peace they need to die with dignity.”
Other findings reported by the study’s authors are that 76% of participants reported a heightened sense of dignity, 68% felt the therapy increased their sense of purpose and 67% said it increased their sense of meaning. Another 47% said it increased their will to live. The researchers also note that patients who reported more initial psychological despair seemed to benefit the most from the intervention.
Dr Chochinov’s study was published as a lead article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in August 2005.
Last modified on:
10 December 2009
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