Psychosocial Interventions for Couples and Families Coping with Cancer

Couple therapy in cancer care delivers improvements in anxiety, depression, and marital satisfaction, with gains in communication and relational functioning. Women with breast cancer gain considerable benefit, whether through individual or group approaches to couple therapy. For men with prostate cancer, altered sexual functioning from prostate cancer treatment creates a more deleterious effect on couples. Psychoeducation, cognitive, and coping models of therapy (interventions with multiple components) deliver reliable effects, including in the setting of lung cancer. Use of telephone and web-based interventions is increasing. In advanced cancer, integrating a couple approach into the model of palliative care has benefits. Family-centered care can also increase knowledge of illness, caregiving, and coping and deliver small gains in relational functioning. Family therapy is worthwhile when a parent of dependent children is dying from cancer, in childhood and adolescent cancers, and when dysfunctional relationships add risk to bereavement outcome. Continuity of family-centered care from the palliative phase into bereavement has been shown to prevent prolonged grief disorder. Future research is needed to enhance approaches to family-centered care.