What is a psycho-oncologist

Need help with this!! Please!

=]

PSYCHO - ONCOLOGY is a broad-based approach to cancer therapy that treats the emotional, social, and spiritual distress which often accompanies cancer. According to Dr. Jimmie Holland, the founder of psycho-oncology, the field has two major emphases. The first is the study of cancer patients' psychological reactions to their illness at all stages of its course; the second is analysis of the emotional, spiritual, social, and behavioral factors that influence the risk of developing cancer and long-term survival following treatment. Some psycho-oncologists consider their field a subspecialty of psychiatry while others emphasize its multidisciplinary aspects. In addition to psychiatrists, departments of psycho-oncology in major cancer centers may include nurses, surgeons, bioethicists, social workers, psychologists, clergy, palliative care specialists, and volunteers.

Psycho-oncology is a relatively new addition to the care of cancer patients. It began in the mid-1970s when Dr. Holland returned to the practice of psychiatry after her children were in school. Married to an oncologist, she had noted that her husband's colleagues focused on the physical effects of the anticancer drugs they were giving their patients to the point of failing to take the patients' thoughts and emotions into account. To some extent this oversight was part of the medical culture of the 1950s and 1960s; at that time cancer carried a stigma because it had low rates of survival. Many doctors were taught in medical school to withhold a diagnosis of cancer from the patient on the grounds that the disease was virtually a death sentence and the truth would be unbearable. Such highly regarded newspapers as the New York Times even refused to print the words "breast cancer" when the founders of the Reach to Recovery program first wanted to insert notices of their meetings.