Facilitating interventions and/or relationships in malignant brain tumors

Brain tumors have special oncological significance. The prognosis of brain tumors is mostly poor, and they are also connected to functional and cognitive deficiencies, as well as possible personality changes. Therefore, the social impact of the disease has special significance as it also affects family and friends of patients with brain tumors. This review focuses on different professional arenas that can psychologically facilitate for the patient and/or for their next of kin. The different arenas discussed are: the patient-physician relationship, the specialist nurse function, functional and cognitive rehabilitative efforts, and support groups. The patient-physician relationship is important, but there is a lack of knowledge of its psychological impact outside of information giving. The few studies conducted on the specialist nurse function are quite unanimous about its facilitating value and this mainly seems to pertain to the next of kin. Functional rehabilitative efforts seem to be worthy, but even if there are promising results, there is still lack of knowledge of the potential of cognitive rehabilitation. Although there is a long history of peer support groups for patients with brain tumors, we do not know enough about the potential in professionally initiated supportive groups or different Internet forums. When initiating further studies within the different arenas for the purpose of understanding how to facilitate for patients with brain tumors and their families, we should also consider the psychological meaning of the activity/intervention.