A Palliative Care Intervention in Forgiveness Therapy for Elderly Terminally Ill Cancer Patients

Palliative care is now considered an essential part of end-of-life care, yet little research examines the efficacy of interventions addressing the psychological treatment of dying patients. Forgiveness therapy has been shown to be effective in improving psychological well-being and may provide a valuable addition to a terminal cancer patient's overall treatment plan. This study experimentally tested the effectiveness of a four-week forgiveness therapy in improving the quality of life of elderly terminally ill cancer patients. Participants (n = 20) were randomly assigned to a forgiveness therapy group or to a wait-list control group, which received forgiveness therapy in the second four-week period. All participants completed instruments measuring forgiveness, hope, quality of life, and anger at pre-test, post-test 1, and post-test 2. The forgiveness therapy group showed greater improvement than the control group, with one-tailed t-tests, on all measures. After receiving forgiveness therapy, participants in both forgiveness treatment conditions demonstrated significant improvements on all measures. The aggregated effect size was large. The four-week forgiveness therapy demonstrated psychological benefits for elderly terminally ill cancer patients and thus may be an appropriate addition to the treatment plan for terminal cancer patients.