Innovations in End-of-Life Care
an international journal of leaders in end-of-life care

William Breitbart, MD is chief of the psychiatry service and attending psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY. An integral member of the world's premiere program in psycho-oncology, Dr. Breitbart is a founding member of the American Society of Psychiatric Oncology/AIDS (ASPOA). Dr. Breitbart is psychiatric consultant to the neuro-oncology unit and attending psychiatrist, Pain & Palliative Care Service, Department of Neurology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Breitbart's research efforts have focused on psychiatric aspects of palliative care and have included studies of interventions for anxiety, depression, desire for death, and delirium in cancer and AIDS patients. Other research efforts include investigating the neuropsychiatric problems of HIV-infected patients, including pain, fatigue, and other symptoms.

A graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, Dr. Breitbart is board-certified in both internal medicine and psychiatry. He has received both a Clinical Fellowship (1985-1986) and a Career Development Award (1986-1989) from the American Cancer Society. A professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Dr. Breitbart has published extensively on the psychiatric complications of cancer and AIDS. His texts include Psychiatric Aspects of Symptom Management in the Cancer Patient, published by the American Psychiatric Press, Psycho-oncology (co-editor with Dr. Jimmie Holland), and Handbook of Psychiatry in Palliative Medicine (co-editor with Dr. Harvey Chochinov), both by Oxford University Press. Dr. Breitbart is editor-in-chief of the newly forthcoming Cambridge University Press international palliative care journal entitled, Palliative & Supportive Care, which will focus on the psychiatric, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of palliative medicine. Drs. Harvey Chochinov and David Kissane are also editors of this new journal. Additionally, Dr. Breitbart is a Soros Faculty Scholar of the Open Society Institute, Project on Death in America.

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