This succinct but comprehensive guide to psycho-oncological practice describes a range of psychological interventions aimed at helping patients cope with cancer treatment.

Cancer care today often provides state-of-the-science biomedical treatment, but fails to address the psychological and social (psychosocial) problems associated with the illness. This failure can compromise the effectiveness of health care and thereby adversely affect the health of cancer patients. Psychological and social problems created or exacerbated by cancer-including depression and other emotional problems; lack of information or skills needed to manage the illness; lack of transportation or other resources; and disruptions in work, school, and family life-cause additional suffering, weaken adherence to prescribed treatments, and threaten patients' return to health. Today, it is not possible to deliver high-quality cancer care without using existing approaches, tools, and resources to address patients' psychosocial health needs. All patients with cancer and their families should expect and receive cancer care that ensures the provision of appropriate psychosocial health services. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient recommends actions that oncology providers, health policy makers, educators, health insurers, health planners, researchers and research sponsors, and consumer advocates should undertake to ensure that this standard is met.

Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully provides valuable insight into the experience of patients and families living with advanced cancer and describes a novel psychotherapeutic approach to help them live meaningfully, while also facing the threat of mortality. Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully, also known by the acronym CALM, is a brief supportive-expressive intervention that can be delivered by a wide range of trained healthcare providers as part of cancer care or early palliative care. The authors provide an overview of the clinical experience and research that led to the development of CALM, a clear description of the intervention, and a manualized guide to aid in its delivery. Situated in the context of early palliative care, this text is destined to be become essential reading for healthcare professionals engaged in providing psychological support to patients and their families who face the practical and profound problems of advanced disease.

When this book first appeared in 1981, it was the first to deal comprehensively with major issues in the psychotherapeutic treatment of cancer patients. It remains the standard volume in the field, drawing together a broad spectrum of work using psychological approaches to treatment of cancer patients and to understanding the disease's sociological and psychological implications. Distinguished contributors from medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology, social work, family and group therapy, and nursing examine key issues, including the role of aggression in the onset and treatment of cancer; sexual functioning of patients; cancer as an emotionally regressive experience, cancer in children, and the countertransference responses of a therapist working with a cancer patient. This volume will be of particular value to helping professionals who deal with cancer patients and their families.

Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy (MCP) for advanced cancer patients is a highly effective intervention for advanced cancer patients, developed and tested in randomized controlled trials by Breitbart and colleagues at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. This treatment manual for group therapy provides clinicians in the oncology and palliative care settings a highly effective, brief, structured intervention shown to be effective in helping patients sustain meaning, hope and quality of life.