Cancer bereavement Mental and Behavioural Disorders
Conditions
Interventions
Participants will be randomised using a computer randomisation tool. Participants are randomly allocated to one of three groups (one starting in October 2018 and two starting in January 2019).
Sponsors
The Loss Foundation
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Inclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria: 1. Aged 18 or over 2. Experience of bereavement by cancer 3. Time since bereavement greater than six months, so as not to interfere with a natural recovery process (Schut & Stroebe, 2010) 4. Not undergoing any other psychological treatment during participation in the intervention 5. Self-referral to the charity or via a related organization
Exclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria: Significant substance or alcohol misuse, which would interfere with ability to participate
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| All outcome measures will be collected online using Qualtrics, a professional survey software. The following questionnaires will be collected at baseline (registering to the groups), prior to every group session, post the intervention, and at 3 months follow up: 1. The Prolonged Grief Disorder Inventory (PG-13). (Prigerson & Maciejewski, 2008) The PG-13 assesses the prevalence and severity of PGD symptoms (e.g. yearning for the deceased, feelings of emotional numbness/detachment from others, feeling that a part of oneself died along with the deceased). The PG-13 is a subset of 13 items from the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG; Prigerson et al., 1995). The ICG has very good internal consistency (a=.85), test-retest reliability (.80), and has excellent incremental validity in predicting a variety of grief-related functional impairments, controlling for depression and anxiety. 2. The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9; Kroenke, Spitzer, & Williams, 2001) is a 9-item self-report questionnaire that measures the severity of depressive symptoms. A sample item is “Feeling tired or having little energy”. Each item is scored on a 4-point scale with response categories of “0=Not at all” to “3=Nearly every day”; this provides a 0 to 27 severity score. The measure has strong psychometric properties (Kroenke et al., 2001). 3. The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7; Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams, & Löwe, 2006) is a 7-item self-report questionnaire that measures the severity of anxiety symptoms. A sample item is “Feeling nervous, anxious or on edge”. Each item is scored on a 4-point scale with response categories of “0=Not at all” to “3=Nearly every day”; this provides a 0 to 21 severity score. The measure has strong psychometric properties (Spitzer et al., 2006). 4. The Self-Compassion Scale-Short Form (SCS-SF; Raes, Pommier, Neff, & Van Gucht, 2011: Appendix I) is a 12-item self-report questionnaire that | — |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| The following questionnaire will be collected after each group session: The Helpful Aspects of Therapy (HAT; Llewelyn, 1988) is a post-session self-report questionnaire that asks about perceptions of key change processes in therapy. It is partly qualitative and captures perceptions of helpful and unhelpful aspects of the previous session. An example item is “Of the events which occurred in the last group session, which one do you feel was the most helpful or important for you personally? Please describe what the event was.” Each event is then scored as to how helpful or unhelpful it was on a 5-point scale with response categories of “0=Not at all” to “4=Extremely”. Two questions ask participants to identify, describe and then rate first a helpful and second an unhelpful event. In addition, there are two optional questions for participants to identify, describe and then rate other helpful and unhelpful events. The following questionnaires will be collected at baseline (registering for the group), prior to the start of the intervention, at the end of the intervention, and at 3 months follow up: 1. The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5; Weathers et al., 2013) is a 20-item self-report questionnaire that assesses symptoms of PTSD. A sample item is “In the past month, how much were you bothered by repeated, disturbing, and unwanted memories of the stress experience?” Each item is scored on a 5-point scale with response categories of “0=Not at all” to “4=Extremely”; this provides a total severity score of 0-80. The measure has strong psychometric properties (Blanchard, Jones-Alexander, Buckley, & Forneris, 1996). 2. Loss-related memory characteristics (OG-M). This 27-item questionnaire asks participants to rate on a 5-point scale (0 – not at all to 4 – very strongly) the extent to which each statement regarding their memory of the loss applied to them during the last month. Twenty-three items probed memory | — |
Countries
United Kingdom
Contacts
Public ContactErin Thompson
Outcome results
None listed