Newswise — Today JAMA Oncology published a paper about a population study by researchers in Sweden that found a recent cancer diagnosis is associated with an increased risk for some mental health disorders and an increased use of psychiatric conditions.

Dr. Karen Syrjala, director of Biobehavioral Sciences and co-director of the Survivorship Program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is available to discuss the findings by Dr. Donghao Lu and colleagues at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

The study included more than 300,000 patients with cancer and more than 3 million cancer-free individuals randomly selected from the Swedish population for comparison. The study found that living with cancer can induce severe psychological stress and co-existing psychiatric conditions are common among patients with cancer. The study also found an increased use of psychiatric medications from one month before diagnosis that peaked at about three months after diagnosis and remained elevated two years after.

Syrjala, also a member of the Clinical Research and Public Health Sciences divisions at Fred Hutch and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, studies the long-term complications of cancer treatment, from cancer pain and symptom management to neurocognitive function and emotions, thinking, behaviors — in short, the impact of cancer on the whole person.

Her clinical expertise focuses on clinical psychology and symptom management for cancer survivors during and after treatment, with emphases on:

• Stress, distress, depression, post-traumatic stress• Pain• Cognitive and memory problems related to cancer treatment• Cognitive behavioral approaches to symptom management, including relaxation and imagery• Hypnosis for symptom management

She also leads the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s Survivorship Guideline Subcommittee on Anxiety and Depression.

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