Finding Meaning in Cancer

While we generally focus on insurance issues, we're also classified as a health blog (at #11 in those Wikio standings, for those keeping score at home). While we've talked about cancer-related insurability and claims issues, we haven't spent much time on the non-financial side.

My better half, who is generally more in tune with this area than I am, just sent me a link to a WSJ story on a new kind of therapy for those with cancer:

"The unusual program ... aims to help cancer patients find a sense of meaning, peace and purpose in their lives, even as the end approaches. “For many cancer patients, the biggest challenge is, ‘How do I live in the space between my diagnosis and my eventual death?’” says William Breitbart, a Memorial Sloan-Kettering psychiatrist who developed the program, known as meaning-centered psychotherapy, and has tested it with more than 300 patients since 2000."

The part that really hit home, however, is how Dr Breitbart first conceived of the idea. He based the treatment on the writings of Dr Victor Frankl (who pased away about 12 years ago), an Austrian-born psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. We are both very familiar with Dr Frankl's writings. In describing how he survivied the horrors of Auschwitz, he observed that the Nazis could imprison, torture and starve him, but he always maintained control over how he would react to, and deal with, his suffering.

This form of therapy seems a natural outgrowth of that ideal; perhaps it will be adopted by other institutions, as well.

[Hat Tip: Gail S.]