The Life Tape Project: Increasing Family Social Support and Symbolic Immortality with a Brief Existential Intervention for Cancer Patients and Their Families

Abstract

Cancer poses a powerful threat to the emotional equilibrium of patients and their families. A key role of the family and medical team is to provide a supportive environment as the patient confronts the reality of death. Few interventions have been developed to help families support patients in dealing with fears of death and dying. We present one such approach, the Life Tape Project (LTP), that helps bring families closer together, increases communication, and acts as an existential intervention leading to greater sense of legacy, meaning, self-awareness, identity, and connection. Additionally, the results of a pilot study exploring the benefits of the LTP are presented, and we describe symbolic immortality, an aspect of existential coping, to illuminate how existential and social support factors can work together to benefit patients and their families.