ArticleBMJ supportive & palliative care2024
Existential distress in family caregivers: scoping review of meaning-making interventions.
Article in BMJ supportive & palliative care, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Constrained Choices and Meaning-Making: A Qualitative Study of Caregivers of Children With Hematologic Malignancies.Psycho-oncology · 2026Article
- Caring for the caregivers: a scoping review of spiritual and religious interventions for family caregivers in home care.BMC nursing · 2026Article
- The Challenges of Caregiving-Isn't It Time We Stopped Just Admiring the Problem?Journal of palliative medicine · 2026Article
- Ambiguous loss in family caregivers of patients in a permanent vegetative state: A reflexive thematic analysis.Palliative & supportive care · 2026Article
- Digital Reminiscence Therapy for Caregivers of Family Members With Dementia.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Suicide attempt by a cancer caregiver: A husband who attempted suicide two months after his wife was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer.Palliative & supportive care · 2026Article
- Joint latent profiles of death anxiety and treatment adherence in HCC patients.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Assessing the Unmet Social Needs and Financial Hardship of Cancer Caregivers: A Scoping Review.Current oncology reports · 2025Article
- Positive Psychological Well-Being in Cancer Caregivers.Psycho-oncology · 2025Article
- End-of-life issues in older adults: Emotional and social factors that shape end-of-life experiences.Advances in psychiatry and behavioral health · 2025Article
- 'People ring because they're frightened': findings from a realist evaluation on the impact of timely responsive care at home at the end of life.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
- A Qualitative Study of CMC Caregivers' Perspectives about their Emotional Well-Being.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2025Article
- Post-Acute Transition to Home With Supportive Care (PATHS): A Novel Nurse Practitioner-Led Telehealth Intervention to Improve End-of-Life Oncology Care.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2025Article
- Benefit Finding and Growth Among Family Caregivers of Individuals With Mental Illness: A Scoping Review.Journal of family nursing · 2025Article
- 'It's hard not to feel like somehow I fell short': A discourse analysis of palliative care providers' experiences with patients' nonphysical suffering.Palliative care and social practice · 2025Article
- Biography Writing in the Pediatric Palliative Care Context: Review and Feasibility Data.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Attending to the Existential Experience.Journal of palliative medicine · 2024Article
- Sustaining Joy in Serious Neurologic Illnesses.Seminars in neurology · 2024Review
- Cancer caregivers are primarily motivated by love and sense of duty.Health psychology research · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesFamily and friend caregivers often feel overwhelmed by and ill-prepared for their responsibilities. Many feel helpless living with uncertainty about the outcome of the patient's illness, which leads to existential distress. Supportive care interventions that address existential distress by promoting meaning and purpose buffer the negative effects of caregiver burden and promote resilience and growth. The purpose of this scoping review is to describe the depth and breadth of available interventions targeting caregiver existential distress.
methodsWe followed the Joanna Briggs Institute's scoping review methods and applied the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension checklist. SCOPUS, Ovid MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases were searched for interventions that targeted existential distress by promoting meaning-making, spiritual well-being, post-traumatic growth and/or benefit finding for caregivers of seriously ill adult patients.
resultsWe screened 1377 titles/abstracts and 42 full-text articles. Thirty-one articles (28 unique studies) met inclusion criteria. Most interventions were designed for caregivers supporting patients with cancer (n=14) or patients receiving palliative care (n=9). Promising interventions included Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy for Cancer Caregivers, Meaning-Based Intervention for Patients and their Partners, Legacy Intervention for Family Enactment, Family Participatory Dignity Therapy and Existential Behavioural Therapy. More than half of the studies (n=20, 64%) were in the feasibility/acceptability/pilot stage of intervention testing.
conclusionLarge randomised controlled trials with more diverse samples of caregivers are needed. Future research should explore the impact of delivering meaning-making interventions to caregivers throughout the illness trajectory. Developing strategies for scaling up and conducting cost analyses will narrow the research and practice gap for meaning-making interventions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.