Spiritual Support

Rev. Michael Barry: Spiritual support at Cancer Treatment Centers focuses primarily on emotional management. We are concerned about how people cope with the disease of cancer. One of the things I teach them how to do is to be joyful. There’s a great deal of research that is done on positive psychology, a good bit learned on optimums. It really is possible to learn how to be a joyful or happy person even in the mitts of it. The problem is, that people just don’t know how to do it. And There really are something s that can be taught, some skills that can be learned to help them learn how to enjoy there life again, even through a difficult time.

Rev. Michael Langham: I think the approach to spiritual support and Cancer Treatment Centers of America could be described in several phases I guess, from a patient first entering our doors were going to have some diagnostic care, if you would. In a form of a spiritual assessment to where were really going to find out from a faith perspective and spiritual perspective, what the patient believes spiritually. How they believe that, how they practice, and if they have any specific spiritual needs that they have that we can help them with. Secondly we look at direct care that direct care is for the patient as well as for the family member and caregivers. Again, the specific needs that the individual may have and how we can help meet them, whether it’s through prayer, whether its trough reading the scripture, whether it’s through worship services, and other services that we provide. If there’s any care that the family needs along those lines, again that’s something that we do directly as we’re working with the patient as well as the family and caregivers.

Rev. Percy McCray Jr.: What we provide from a spiritual prospective at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America is the fact that spiritually we incorporate the idea that one’s faith belief and their practices can be amalgamated and integrated with the clinical processes of their treatment. Prayer, meditation, spiritual support – things that are very important to people from a faith-based perspective, but their disconnected from their local churches and their faith-based communities. We incorporate and create an atmosphere that allows all that to be openly imported in all that they do within the framework of our four walls.