Cristiane Decat Bergerot, PhD

Integrating psychosocial care into cancer care allows patients to receive emotional support, counseling, and coping strategies to help navigate treatment.

“Psycho-oncology has made remarkable progress; however, there are still critical areas for further development,” Cristiane D. Bergerot, PhD, BS, MS, said.

It is crucial that oncologists and other cancer care specialists collaborate with psycho-oncology specialists to optimize patient treatment outcomes.

World Psycho-Oncology Day is an initiative aimed at spreading awareness and pursuing the further integration of psychosocial care into cancer treatment.

Organizations such as ASCO and ESMO recognize the importance of integrating psychosocial care into cancer treatment.

Routine biopsychosocial screening of a patient with metastatic renal cell cancer at the Centro de Câncer de Brasília improved symptom management and shrunk costs for both the patient and her caregivers.

ABSTRACT Patients with cancer represent a vulnerable population and are at greater risk of developing serious complications as a result of a COVID-19 infection. In response, oncology societies around the world have proposed changes to their standards of care. These changes have helped guide health care providers in prioritizing clinical management of patients with cancer: identifying situations in which urgent intervention is needed and those that can be triaged until the risk of infection has lessened.