Mind On Mental Health · Penn Medicine - Princeton House Behavioral Health

What is Psycho-Oncology?

·21 min·1 clip

A legacy project turns lost baseball routines into a new form of connection between a parent and child.

1. Mind On Mental Health examines psycho-oncology and the role of mental health in cancer care. 2. Andy Dean, a licensed clinical social worker, interviews Dr. Cara Buda, a clinical health psychologist at Penn Medicine Princeton Health's Cancer Center Psychosocial Oncology Clinic. 3. The episode asks how psychological care can help people navigate cancer while attending to emotional, social, practical, and medical concerns. 4. Dr. Buda says clinical health psychology focuses on the whole person rather than only the medical side of illness. 5. Her work can include joining medical visits, providing outpatient psychotherapy, and addressing insomnia, fatigue, and pain related to treatment. 6. The Princeton Medical Center clinic coordinates face-to-face support during oncology visits, chemotherapy infusions, and other points in the cancer trajectory. 7. Dr. Buda says the program includes two psychologists, a licensed associate counselor, and a licensed social worker. 8. Meaning-centered psychotherapy grew from logotherapy and the work of Victor Frankel, whose book is identified as Man's Search for Meaning. 9. William Breitbart and his team at Memorial Sloan Kettering developed meaning-centered psychotherapy as a standardized evidence-based protocol. 10. The therapy helps patients connect with sources of meaning, purpose, and legacy despite cancer-related uncertainty and treatment difficulties. 11. Dr. Buda identifies choice of attitude as a central idea when circumstances cannot be controlled or changed. 12. A young father unable to play baseball or attend every game with his children illustrates how meaning can be preserved through changed activities. 13. The discussion distinguishes acknowledging an unfair situation from allowing resistance to increase suffering. 14. Dr. Buda says therapy should not label negative emotions as wrong or remove fear, anxiety, or sadness. 15. She describes emotions as signals that can indicate something important about a person's experience. 16. The acceptance-and-commitment metaphor of passengers on a bus illustrates allowing difficult thoughts and feelings without letting them drive behavior. 17. Dr. Buda says grief can reveal what matters because removing grief would also remove the memories, love, and importance connected to the loss. 18. The interview format combines clinical examples from cancer psychology with Andy Dean's comparisons to acceptance and commitment therapy. 19. Cancer patients and caregivers seeking meaning-centered coping tools. 20. Listeners wanting oncology treatment details or medical treatment recommendations.

As heard by us

A plainspoken look at how cancer care and mental health meet when control runs out.

Psycho-oncology is framed here as part of cancer care rather than a side note, and that makes the discussion feel humane and practical. It stays close to what clinicians actually do, from extra support during treatment to the social, emotional, and practical strain of illness.

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Why you'd press play

You want a grounded take on mental health inside cancer care.

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