psycho-oncology

We often describe progress in oncology through the language of innovation. New drugs. New technologies. New discoveries. Yet scientific breakthroughs rarely change cancer care on their own. They require people willing to pursue difficult ideas, build institutions, challenge accepted thinking,…

On paper, cancer care can be mapped, measured, and modelled. In practice, it is far less contained. For Charis Ng, a trainee health psychologist and PhD student, that gap between theory and lived reality became impossible to ignore during her…

As cancer survival improves, a critical gap persists: the period after treatment, where psychological distress, identity disruption, and unmet needs remain insufficiently addressed in routine oncology care. A System Designed for Treatment, Not Transition “We have to be next to…

The launch of World Psycho-Oncology Day signals growing momentum behind psychosocial care in cancer, but without structural change, millions of patients will continue to go without the support they need. With the announcement of World Psycho-Oncology Day (WPOD), to be…

In oncology, we are trained to deliver hope alongside difficult truths. We speak about survival rates, probabilities, and outcomes. In conflict settings, those terms lose stability. What does survival mean when hospitals are destroyed, treatments cannot reach patients, and people…

Too Much Hope is a False Hope K. still remembers the moment she heard the diagnosis. The room felt suddenly smaller, the air heavier, and time strangely suspended. “You wake up in a void, alone and scared,” she says. “But…

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”— Albert Camus People at the Centre of Care “United by Unique” is the World Cancer Day theme for 2025–2027. This year, the focus is on placing people at the…

Oncology is both one of the most inspiring and one of the most demanding fields in medicine. Unlike other specialties, the emotional and professional boundaries in oncology are often blurred. Many of us feel that our lives are devoted to…

A few days after being diagnosed with cancer, at only 32 years of age, Katarzyna Chmielewska-Wojciechowska met a friend who asked, in passing, how she was doing. She told him. His response was to sympathise and offer reassurance. He knew…

It isn’t over when treatment’s over. Even if, as far as the clinician is concerned, therapy has been successful and the cancer is effectively ‘cured’, cancer patients often experience a nagging – sometimes devastating – fear that their cancer will…