# Randomized Controlled Trial of the Meaning‐Making Intervention (MMi) in Patients Newly Diagnosed With Advanced Cancer: Full Trial

## TL;DR

A study tested if a meaning-making intervention helps patients with advanced cancer feel more meaning in life, but found no significant improvements compared to usual care or attention control.

## Contribution

This is the first full trial to evaluate the Meaning-Making intervention in newly diagnosed advanced cancer patients.

## Key findings

- The Meaning-Making intervention did not significantly improve meaning in life or other outcomes compared to usual care or attention control.
- Stage III cancer patients in the experimental group showed a possible trend toward higher post-traumatic growth, but it was not statistically significant after correction.
- Future research should explore how to better target, time, and tailor meaning-focused interventions for cancer patients.

## Abstract

This study aimed to test whether the Meaning‐Making intervention (MMi) increases the sense of meaning in life in people newly diagnosed with any type of advanced cancer.

We conducted a 3‐arm parallel randomized controlled trial with 239 patients newly diagnosed (< 6 months) with advanced cancer (stages III or IV), assigned to either an experimental group (n = 80), an attention‐control group (n = 80), or a usual care control group (n = 79). Meaning in life (primary outcome), anxiety and depression, quality of life, existential wellbeing, and posttraumatic growth were measured at 2 months post randomization with follow‐up at 4 and 6 months.

There were no significant (p < 0.05) inter‐group differences in FACIT‐Sp‐12 Meaning subscale scores 2 months post‐randomization in independent two‐sample t‐tests (experimental group vs. usual care p = 0.65; experimental group vs. attention control p = 0.94), nor at 2, 4, and 6 months post‐randomization using a mixed effect linear regression model and adjusting for baseline characteristics and random effect of time (p = 0.55–0.99). In exploratory analyses, stage III experimental group participants seemed to present higher post‐traumatic growth on the PTGI 2 months post‐randomization than patients in the AC (p = 0.02), but this was not significant when applying a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons.

In this three‐arm randomized controlled trial, the MMi did not produce improvements on the primary or secondary outcomes compared with AC or UC. There may be some indications of a signal for benefit for patients with stage III cancer, which warrant follow‐up but cannot be considered definitive. Future work should prioritize targeting, dose, timing, and contextual moderators to clarify when, and for whom, meaning‐focused approaches are most effective.