William Breitbart - Research & Career

Research & Career

Dr. Breitbart’s clinical role as the Consulting Psychiatrist for the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center led him to focus his research efforts on the psychiatric aspects of end-of-life care. He has received continuous funding for investigator initiated research since 1989, including eight National Institute of Health funded projects, four National Institute of Mental Health funded projects, four National Cancer Institute funded projects, and seven privately funded research projects.

Much of his early research focused on the neuropsychiatric problems of HIV-infected patients, including pain, fatigue, delirium and other symptoms that impact quality of life. As Breitbart’s clinical experiences brought more and more attention to the terminally ill patients’ desire for hastened death, he became interested in studying the psychological and psychosocial factors associated with this desire for death among the terminally ill population. Breitbart and his colleagues began to reframe the concept of despair at the end of life, expanding the concerns of palliative and supportive care beyond symptom management. In addition to constructs such as depression and anxiety, they found that factors such as hopelessness, loss of meaning, and decreased spiritual well-being contributed greatly to the dying patients’ sense suffering. In addition to his studies focusing on hopelessness and the desire for hastened death, Breitbart participates in a multi-centered research trial dealing with dignity-conserving care in palliative care settings.

Breitbart’s most recent research efforts involve the development of novel psychotherapeutic interventions, which he has named "Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy", aimed at sustaining meaning and improving spiritual well-being in the terminally ill. In an interview for the international journal Innovations in End-of-Life Care, Breitbart refers to the works of existential theorists/philosophers, particularly Viktor Frankl. Frankl’s meaning-based model of logotherapy and his book Man’s Search for Meaning had a significant influence on Breitbart and directed the goals of his work towards the concept of helping dying patients to maintain meaning at the end of life through "Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy".

Breitbart and colleagues have developed both an individual and group model of "Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy", inspired by Frankl’s work. These novel interventions are aimed at helping patients sustain and enhance a sense of purpose and meaning in life through various psycho-education tasks, and in turn improve their overall quality of life as they encounter their mortality.