Brief Description:

Larger than Life has created a collaboration with Ash’har – a nationwide network offering psychological treatments, counseling and diagnosis – to provide support services throughout Israel for 100 cancer stricken children and their families.

The Need:

Families need help surviving and processing the trauma of their child having cancer. When a child is diagnosed, the family’s world is turned upside-down as their lives now revolve around doctors, hospitals, and chemotherapy.

There is a great need for compassionate support to understand the effects of their child’s disease on parents and siblings — individually, and as a unit. Families suffer the same social isolation as the child with cancer as they navigate the challenges of childhood cancer, the serious side effects caused by chemotherapy, and all the chaos of testing and treatments.

The psychological effects on the family cannot be understated: many at a socio-economic disadvantage lack the tools to maintain hope above the trauma. Siblings of the sick child also need to adapt to their family’s new state: the absence of their parents, the focus of attention on the sick child, and understanding their place in the challenged family.

When the child returns home, re-integration into to an everyday life routine can be challenged by repressed emotions to the family crisis, including post-traumatic symptoms. Indeed, half of marriages end directly due to the stress of supporting a sick child.

The Program:

In a collaboration with Ash’har Counseling and Psychological Services, we are providing children and their families with emotional support and psychological treatment.

We aim to preserve families’ strengths and help them maintain the energy necessary to function. Through individual or group therapy held by competent and professional psychologists, psychotherapists, art therapists, and other mental health professionals, we are able to provide families with the necessary treatment to keep them in fighting mode against the cancer that has entered their lives.

Our ability to provide this critical mental health care is made possible through the generosity of people like you.

We hope that you’ll join our community and help support Israeli families who are fighting for their child’s life.