Laura Bukavina, MD, on the need to integrate mental health support in GU cancer care

In this interview, Laura Bukavina, MD, MPH, MSc, touches on the need for improved mental health support for patients with urologic cancers, which was highlighted in the study, “Financial Distress in Genitourinary Cancer: Insights From CDC National Health Interview Survey.” Bukavina is an assistant professor of urologic oncology at Cleveland Clinic Glickman Urologic Institute and the translational science lead in GU oncology at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.

Video Transcript:

For example, our bladder cancer patients, in terms of not only the chronicity of disease in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, [but] when we're talking about muscle invasive cancer, there's a lot of self-image and coping mechanisms that patients have to be able to acquire when they start chemotherapy or surgery, or even being able to reflect on what their new identity looks like with a stoma, for example. All of it is a process. Unlike a lot of the societies within oncology, including ASCO or even NCCN, urology really does not do a good job at recommending mental health to our patients, whether it's prostate, kidney, or bladder. We don't really have it part of our guidelines. We don't really spend time, and a lot of people don't even have the resources to recommend it. But I think the more we talk about it and realize it's a real issue, the more these resources will become available within the institutions as well as to providers.

This transcription has been edited for clarity.