Ep3 - Caring for cancer patients

Everyone has a story: talking about mental health

Caring for cancer patients should include their mental as well as their physical health. COMPASS Pathways’ Ekaterina Malievskaia talks to Manish Agrawal, medical oncologist and co-director of clinical research at Aquilino Cancer Center in Maryland, an outpatient community centre dedicated to whole person cancer care. In 2020, Manish was part of the team that built the Center for Healing at Aquilino, designed to address the emotional toll of cancer on patients and caregivers. Manish is now in the final stages of an FDA-approved clinical trial in psilocybin therapy for cancer patients with depression, the first of its kind. In the trial, patients are given psilocybin, a psychoactive substance, while supported one-to-one by a specially trained therapist, with preparation and integration sessions before and after the psilocybin session. Manish talks about the promise of psilocybin therapy as a tool to help patients overcome the distress that comes with a cancer diagnosis, and the impact that this has on him personally, as well as on his patients and their families.