CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 812Religion, Spirituality, and PsychologyPalliative and Oncologic CarePalliative Care and End-of-Life Issues

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 32 of the 32 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Effect of spiritual well-being on end-of-life despair in terminally-ill cancer patients

McClain, Colleen S, Rosenfeld, Barry, Breitbart, William·2003·The Lancet
DOI 10.1016/s0140-6736(03)13310-7
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Background The importance of spirituality in coping with a terminal illness is becoming increasingly recognised. We aimed to assess the relation between spiritual well-being, depression, and end-of-life despair in terminally-ill cancer patients.Methods 160 patients in a palliative care hospital with a life expectancy of less than 3 months were interviewed with a series of standardised instruments, including the functional assessment of chronic illness therapy-spiritual well-being scale, the Hamilton depression rating scale, the Beck hopelessness scale, and the schedule of attitudes toward hastened death. Suicidal ideation was based on responses to the Hamilton depression rating scale.Findings Significant correlations were seen between spiritual well-being and desire for hastened death (r=-0.51), hopelessness (r=-0.68), and suicidal ideation (r=-0.41). Results of multiple regression analyses showed that spiritual well-being was the strongest predictor of each outcome variable and provided a unique significant contribution beyond that of depression and relevant covariates. Additionally, depression was highly correlated with desire for hastened death in participants low in spiritual well-being (r=0.40, p<0.0001) but not in those high in spiritual well-being (r=0.20, p=0.06).Interpretation Spiritual well-being offers some protection against end-of-life despair in those for whom death is imminent. Our findings have important implications for palliative care practice. Controlled research assessing the effect of spirituality-based interventions is needed to establish what methods can help engender a sense of peace and meaning.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/s0140-6736(03)13310-7

Cites

32 of 32 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 32 references

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Kennelly, 2001, Symptom distress, spirituality and hope among persons with recurrent cancer, Dissertation Abstracts International, 61, 5236

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 401–500 of 812

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
McClain, C. S., Rosenfeld, B., & Breitbart, W.
Affiliations
  • Fordham University (US)
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (US)
Corresponding author
Rosenfeld, Barry
ORCID
Venue
The Lancet
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2003-05
Volume
361
Issue
9369
Pages
1603-1607
ISSN
  • 0099-5355 (ISSN-L)
  • 0140-6736
DOI
10.1016/s0140-6736(03)13310-7
OpenAlex
W2137699706
Cited by
812
References
32
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 52 · 2015: 38 · 2014: 44 · 2013: 30 · 2012: 48
FWCI
38.05
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • The Lancet (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institute of Nursing Research (R01NR005183, NR-05183)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative and Oncologic Care
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
Keywords
spiritual well-being, terminal cancer patients, palliative care, depression, hopelessness, suicidal ideation
MeSH terms
Aged, Attitude to Death, Female, Humans, Male, Neoplasms, Palliative Care, Social Support, Logistic Models, Terminally Ill, Spirituality

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review