Table 2.

Commonly used psychological interventions in palliative care

Intervention	Purpose	Format	Intervention efficacy studies
Supportive expressive therapy [94]	Supportive techniques to create a safe, trusting and comfortable environment to form therapeutic alliance and expressive techniques to encourage discussion of personal experiences and emotionsto support processing and interpretation of problem	Therapeutic technique used in individual or group therapy format that originated from psychoanalytic/psychodynamic framework	Significant decline in total mood disturbance and traumatic stress symptoms in metastatic breast cancer patients [95] Improve quality of life and psychosocial status in breast cancer patients [96] Anxiety, depression, anger decreased and coping improved in male gastrointestinal cancer patients [97]
Cognitive behavioral therapy [98]	Treatment for problematic symptoms by changing thought patterns, behaviors and emotions which are interrelated	Typically individual sessions ranging from 5–20 sessions	Improvement in functional and symptoms scales [99]
Acceptance and commitment therapy [100]	To reduce avoidance and enable acceptance of both positive and negative components of experience by developing psychological flexibility	Individual or group sessions ranging from 8–16 sessions	Reduced depressive symptoms, psychological distress, improvements in anxiety, characteristics and health-related quality of life [101]
Dignity therapy [87,88]	Psychosocial and existential distress in terminal patients	2 Sessions: first eliciting patient’s life history and hopes for their loved ones and second session patient presented with narrative of first session and asked to edit or add content	Initial feasibility study found significantly less suffering and depression post-treatment but randomized, controlled trial demonstrated no significant difference between groups [88]
CALM: managing cancer and living meaningfully [102,103]	Focus on 4 domains: Symptom management and communication with health care providers Changes in self and relations with close others Spiritual wellbeing and sense of meaning Advance care planning	3–6 sessions over 3-month period	Efficacy studies had significant attrition but reported significant fewer symptoms of depression and death anxiety and significantly improved overall quality of life [103]
MCP: Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy [89–92]	Targets spiritual wellbeing and sense of meaning in advanced cancer patients	Structured manualized for either individual intervention (7 weeks/sessions) or group therapy (8 weeks/session) for advanced cancer patients and caregivers; Abbreviated 3 session format for palliative care setting	At post-treatment, improved spiritual wellbeing, quality of life, symptom burden, and symptom related distress but no significant difference between groups at 2-month follow-up [89]