Cuidados Paliativos e Medicina

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Factors Related to Spirituality for Terminally ill Cancer Patients through Life Review Interview in Japan

Michiyo Ando*

Terminally ill cancer patients feel spiritual pain such as loss of meaning to live or existence, and one of the psychological cares is life review interview. Life review seems to be useful to integrate patients’ lives and we conducted a series of life review studies. The present study proposes factors related with spirituality through our previous life review studies. Firstly we conducted both the Structured Life Review in which there were about 4 session times for a terminally ill cancer patient individually and identified some factors which improved patients’ spirituality by a text mining of PC software. Secondary, we conducted the Short-Term Life Review in which there were 2 session times for them to complete this therapy, and patients’ narrative were analyzed by the same way. By considering positive effective factors with non-positive effective factors, we observed the following four dimensions. Good human relationships vs. Bad human relationships; 2) Good memories and life satisfaction vs. Bad memories and poor life satisfaction (including attainments or self-confidence); 3) Pleasure in the past and Daily Activities vs. Confrontation of practical problems (including worries about future); and 4) Integrative life review style vs. Non-integrative life review style. These dimensions appear to be more predictive factors about the efficacy of spiritual wellbeing in terminal cancer patients, particularly after life review is conducted.