2015 World Congress of Psycho-Oncology

Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully (CALM): An Individual and Couple Based Supportive-Expressive Intervention

Speakers: Gary Rodin MD and Sarah Hales MD

This interactive workshop provides a theoretical and clinical framework for the CALM intervention and will build skills in in its delivery. Through the use of videotaped treatment sessions, participants will learn how to integrate the four content domains of CALM with the process of this intervention. They will consider how to engage sensitively with individuals and their partners at this stage of life, and to help them face the threats of physical decline, dependency and mortality. The workshop will help participants to make creative use of their own experience within the structure of CALM and to engage with the practical and profound problems that individuals face at this stage of their life. It will help participants to build and apply therapeutic skills in empathic engagement, mentalization and in intersubjective relatedness in the therapeutic setting. Finally, it will address the clinical structure in which CALM can be delivered, the ongoing supervisory process that supports it and the evaluation of treatment outcomes. The attendee will be able to:

1. Understand and apply the theoretical framework of the CALM intervention
2. More effectively engage with patients and their primary caregivers living with metastatic and advanced cancer.
3. Integrate the four domains of CALM with the treatment process
4. Create a clinical structure for CALM and evaluate CALM treatment outcomes