Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy (MCP) for Family Caregivers of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Patients: Intervention to Improve Family-Focused Palliative Care

Engaging in a process of meaning-making has been found to be an effective palliative-based intervention for patients and holds promise for family caregivers. This led me, a family scholar, to engage with the research team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center that developed MCP for patients with advanced cancer and then adapted it for caregivers of cancer patients (MCP-C). To date, MCP-C has not been specifically tested in the HSCT caregiver population. The purpose of my proposed Sojourns project is to pilot MCP-C in the Hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation family caregiver population, beginning in the acute care environment, to understand the feasibility, acceptability, preliminary effects, suitability, and optimal timing of MCP-C for this caregiver population whose needs are often unaddressed by healthcare systems.