ABSTRACT
Groups for people with catastrophic illness come together for many reasons: to gain support, to reduce isolation, increase social contact, access information, improve problem solving, and find hope and motivation to cope with the illness and its treatment. Illnesses that are considered medically critical, with the possibility of being terminal, take the patient to the point of perceiving the inevitability of end of his or her life. This realization of end of life is a concept that become a focal therapeutic issue, because it can elicit a re-evaluation of the purpose and value of one's life. Therapy involves finding the balance between providing accurate information that may or may not be positive, trying to instill hope for the future, and acknowledging the possibility of a lack of future. Group members may feel alive but removed from previous everyday tasks of living. The interventions should be universal in any psychotherapeutic support group that assists people in dealing with potentially life-threatening illnesses.
