Mark Lazenby on Universality of Psychosocial Concerns Following Cancer Diagnosis

MARK LAZENBY, PHD

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Mark Lazenby, PhD, associate professor at Yale School of Nursing and incoming president of American Psychosocial Oncology Society (APOS), discusses the universality of psychosocial concerns following a cancer diagnosis.

Despite economic status or living conditions, Lazenby says, everyone around the world goes into an existential crisis after being diagnosed with cancer. Avery Weisman, MD, defined the first 100 days of a cancer diagnosis as the “period of existential plight.”

“I don’t care where the patient lives. That patient hears the ‘c-word’ and they go into a period of existential plight,” Lazenby says. “That’s the time in which we need to provide good psychosocial care, regardless of the patient’s living conditions.”

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