CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 29Cancer survivorship and carePalliative and Oncologic CareReligion, Spirituality, and Psychology

A cognitive–existential intervention to improve existential and global quality of life in cancer patients: A pilot study

Open access
Gagnon, Pierre, Fillion, Lise, Robitaille, Marie-Anik, Girard, Michèle, Tardif, François, Cochrane, Jean-Philippe, Le Moignan Moreau, Joanie, Breitbart, William·2015·Palliative and Supportive Care
DOI 10.1017/s147895151400073xPMC PMC5485259
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Objective: We developed a specific cognitive–existential intervention to improve existential distress in nonmetastatic cancer patients. The present study reports the feasibility of implementing and evaluating this intervention, which involved 12 weekly sessions in both individual and group formats, and explores the efficacy of the intervention on existential and global quality of life (QoL) measures. Method: Some 33 nonmetastatic cancer patients were randomized between the group intervention, the individual intervention, and the usual condition of care. Evaluation of the intervention on the existential and global QoL of patients was performed using the existential well-being subscale and the global scale of the McGill Quality of Life (MQoL) Questionnaire. Results: All participants agreed that their participation in the program helped them deal with their illness and their personal life. Some 88.9% of participants agreed that this program should be proposed for all cancer patients, and 94.5% agreed that this intervention helped them to reflect on the meaning of their life. At post-intervention, both existential and psychological QoL improved in the group intervention versus usual care (p = 0.086 and 0.077, respectively). At the three-month follow-up, global and psychological QoL improved in the individual intervention versus usual care (p = 0.056 and 0.047, respectively). Significance of results: This pilot study confirms the relevance of the intervention and the feasibility of the recruitment and randomization processes. The data strongly suggest a potential efficacy of the intervention for existential and global quality of life, which will have to be confirmed in a larger study.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/s147895151400073x

Cites

63 of 63 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

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?

  • The McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire-R is a global measure of quality of life with good psychometric properties, has been shown to be sensitive to change in people with cancer, and has been validated in people living with MND.

    “This is a global measure of quality of life that has good psychometric properties [45], and has been shown to be sensitive to change e.g. it was able to distinguish between days rated as bad, average and good in people with cancer [46, 47]. It has also been validated in plwMND [48, 49].”

    From A randomised controlled trial of acceptance and commitment therapy plus usual care compared to usual care alone for improving psychological health in people with motor neuron disease (COMMEND): study protocol. (2022) · cites this paper as [46]

    The Methods > Questionnaires section describes the original MQoL, not the MQoL-R. The Results > Efficacy Outcomes section reports a trend toward improved global quality-of-life scores among cancer patients, which offers limited support for sensitivity to change. It does not report that the questionnaire distinguished bad, average, and good days; the other parts of the citing sentence have separate citations. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 65 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Moadel A Morgan C Fatone A 1999 Seeking meaning and hope: Self-reported spiritual and existential needs among an ethnically diverse cancer patient population Psycho-Oncology 8 5 378 385 10559797

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Gagnon, P., Fillion, L., Robitaille, M.-A., Girard, M., Tardif, F., Cochrane, J.-P., Le Moignan Moreau, J., & Breitbart, W.
Affiliations
  • Université Laval (CA)
  • Michel-Sarrazin (CA)
  • Hôtel-Dieu de Québec (CA)
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (US)
Corresponding author
Gagnon, Pierre
ORCID
Venue
Palliative and Supportive Care
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2014-07-22
Volume
13
Issue
4
Pages
981-990
ISSN
  • 1478-9515 (ISSN-L)
  • 1478-9523
DOI
10.1017/s147895151400073x
PMC
PMC5485259
OpenAlex
W1969241645
Cited by
29
References
65
Citations by year
2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 4 · 2015: 2
FWCI
0.96
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified)
Locations
  • Palliative & Supportive Care (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • McGill University
  • Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • National Cancer Institute (P30CA008748)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cancer survivorship and care
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative and Oncologic Care
  • Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
Keywords
existential suffering, quality of life, cancer patients, group intervention, individual interventions, existential well-being, meaning of life, psychological quality of life, feasibility
MeSH terms
Adult, Aged, Existentialism, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Neoplasms, Palliative Care, Pilot Projects, Quality of Life, Quebec, Surveys and Questionnaires, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

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