# Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy for Parents Bereaved by Cancer: A Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial

> **NIH NIH R01** · SLOAN-KETTERING INST CAN RESEARCH · 2022 · $756,489

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Bereavement support is a core tenet of comprehensive palliative care. Yet, accessible, evidence-based
interventions are limited, particularly for bereaved parents. Losing a child to cancer is one of the most
devastating experiences a parent can endure. Bereaved parents are at higher risk for numerous poor mental
and physical health outcomes, including prolonged grief (PG), depression, reduced quality of life, existential
distress, decreased work productivity, adverse health behaviors, and even death. Despite their suffering,
bereaved parents report emotional and logistical barriers to returning to the institution where their child was
treated and do not know where to turn for support in their communities, resulting in underutilization of services.
The need for empirically-supported, conceptually sound, acceptable, and accessible interventions for bereaved
parents is clear. Grief researchers have long emphasized the therapeutic value of facilitating meaning-making
to improve bereavement outcomes. However, meaning-based interventions have not been empirically
evaluated for grieving parents. To address this, we developed a manualized intervention, Meaning-Centered
Grief Therapy (MCGT), for this critically at-risk and underserved population. Our pilot randomized controlled
trial (RCT) comparing MCGT to supportive psychotherapy (SP), the most commonly received grief therapy,
showed that MCGT outperformed SP for parents with higher baseline PG levels, improving PG, depression,
anxiety, hopelessness, and quality of life domains. It also showed that telehealth delivery in parents’ homes
was feasible and could reduce access-to-care barriers. In the wake of COVID-19, telehealth grief interventions
are needed now more than ever, and yet evidence is scant. To improve the quality of home-based palliative
care through enhanced bereavement services, the objective of the proposed mixed methods, multisite 3-arm
RCT is to build on our prior work and examine which grief interventions delivered in the home via telehealth
work best for whom and why. We will compare the efficacy of MCGT to SP and enhanced usual care (EUC) for
bereaved parents with elevated PG symptoms. Primary outcomes will be reduced PG and depression
symptoms. We will randomize 265 bereaved parents recruited from four institutions and the community to
MCGT, SP, or EUC. We will embed qualitative interviews concurrently with quantitative measures, which is an
innovation in grief intervention research. Self-report measures, as well as blinded diagnostic interviews to
increase rigor, will be given at multiple time points through 6 months post-intervention. We will conduct
qualitative interviews about the interventions’ impact in a purposively sampled subset (n=48). The specific aims
of this trial are: 1) to compare the efficacy of MCGT, SP, and EUC in reducing PG and depression symptoms in
bereaved parents, 2) to contextualize quantitative findings with qualitative data, and 3) ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10475820
- **Project number:** 5R01NR019637-02
- **Recipient organization:** SLOAN-KETTERING INST CAN RESEARCH
- **Principal Investigator:** Wendy G. Lichtenthal
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $756,489
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-08-26 → 2023-05-25

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10475820

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10475820, Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy for Parents Bereaved by Cancer: A Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial (5R01NR019637-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10475820. Licensed CC0.

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