Finding Meaning at the End

What I am posting here is an entry from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, to which I subscribe (“Searching for Meaning in Terminal Cancer”, by Shirley S. Wang, July 14, 2009). http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/07/14/searching-for-meaning-in-terminal-cancer/ You can find the full text of this article in the regular edition of the paper (wsj.com).

“Celebrity spokespeople like Lance Armstrong and Christina Applegate tout how their positive attitudes helped them deal with their cancer.

[Note: in the original article there is a comment that says studies have not borne this out] . But some patients, particularly those with end-stage disease, have a harder time feeling upbeat and finding meaning in their lives.

“Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Center Center are looking to help patients with later-stage cancer to do just that — achieve a sense of meaning and purpose to their lives even while facing their death, the WSJ reports.

“Sloan-Kettering psychiatrist William Breitbart developed the program, which is currently being examined in a research study. It’s based in part on the writings of Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who survived an Auschwitz concentration camp believing that a meaningful lif