'Dividing the desolation': Clients views on the benefits of a cancer counselling service

This paper describes clients' accounts of the benefits they derived from a short course of cancer counselling provided within a humanist framework. Th ree hundred and two clients who had attended at least one session of a shor t course of cancer counselling received an evaluation form, which incorpora ted both fixed-choice and open-ended questions. One hundred and forty two ( 47%) clients returned evaluation forms; those who had attended more session s were significantly more likely to do so. Quantitative data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows and qu alitative data using a thematic approach. Almost all clients indicated that they felt they had benefited from counselling. Analysis of the open-ended questions identified nine main benefits of counselling and four key avenues or processes through which clients derived these benefits. Overall, counse lling was seen as helping them to work through powerful thoughts and feelin gs and so to come to terms with cancer and to regain a sense of control in their lives. The benefits of a short course of counselling which clients id entified reflect the aims of humanistic counselling which are not well capt ured by psychiatric assessments or most standard research instruments. In e valuating cancer counselling services, assessments which include these clie nt-defined outcomes may provide a more sensitive way of gauging the value o f counselling to a non-clinic population. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & S ons, Ltd.