Meaning in life in palliative care patients.

Context: The construct "meaning in life" (MiL) has recently raised the interest of clinicians working in psycho-oncology and end-of-life care and has become a topic of scientific investigation.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare MiL in palliative care (PC) patients with a representative sample of the German population.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, all PC patients treated in the PC inpatient unit and through the PC consult service at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Hospital, Munich, from May 2005 to July 2007 were eligible to participate.

The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE): validation of a new instrument for meaning-in-life research.

The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE) is a respondent-generated instrument for the assessment of individual meaning in life (MiL). In the SMiLE, the respondents list three to seven areas that provide meaning to their lives before rating the current level of importance and satisfaction of each area. Indices of total weighting (IoW; range, 20-100), total satisfaction (IoS; range, 0-100), and total weighted satisfaction (IoWS; range, 0-100) are calculated.

Meaning in life in the Federal Republic of Germany: results of a representative survey with the Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE).

Background: The construct "meaning-in-life" (MiL) has recently raised the interest of clinicians working in psycho-oncology and end-of-life care and has become a topic of scientific investigation. Difficulties regarding the measurement of MiL are related to the various theoretical and conceptual approaches and its inter-individual variability. Therefore the "Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation" (SMiLE), an individualized instrument for the assessment of MiL, was developed.