Psycho-Oncology: Caring for the Mind During Cancer
A cancer diagnosis is a huge stress burden, yet most patients are never offered psychological support. We help patients lessen pain, stress, anxiety, and depression and build resilience, in one-on-one sessions or in free small groups of no more than 6.
Mission statement for woodlands-psychiatrist
The treatment philosophy of our clinic is to bring about the relief of stress in patients with chronic medical and psychiatric illness. Stress is the main contributing factor in at least 85% of all illnesses. Therefore, it makes sense to tackle this factor and help patients get control of this illness inducing component.
Every patient has the capacity for self-healing. To make it happen, patients get training in stress management. In addition to such training, we offer interested patients help with the discovery of the original trauma underlying their illness and its resolution.
Patients, especially those with chronic illnesses, routinely benefit from learning behavioral control of anxiety instead of getting medications prescribed for them for that purpose.
Patients with a diagnosis of cancer are a special case. They are not usually offered psychological support by their oncologists, even though getting a cancer diagnosis is a huge stress burden which has a negative impact of the course of illness.
Our psycho-oncology services aim to take care of the minds of these patients. This gets done in individual, face-to-face sessions. For those patients who wish to reduce treatment costs to zero, we offer free-of-charge, small format group sessions of no more than 6 participants. The aim of these services is giving patients the tools to lessen pain, stress, anxiety, and depression, and to increase resilience. Studies have shown that the improvement of the quality of life of these patients, because of getting these psychosocial supports, can help with survival rates.
In summary, we are not the usual psychiatry practice in that we usually do not focus on medication but rather on psychotherapy, psychological education, teaching resilience and stress management, and deep meditation. Our psycho-oncology function allows us to give special attention to patients with a cancer diagnosis.
Meet Dr. Peter Berndt
Family physician turned psychiatrist
Dr. Berndt spent 18 years as a small-town family doctor, making house calls, delivering hundreds of babies, and seeing firsthand how stress shapes people’s health. That experience led him to medical hypnosis and then to a psychiatric residency at UT Health Science Center in San Antonio. Today his focus is helping patients take control of stress and draw on their own capacity to heal, with medication only when it’s truly needed.