• News

"How to Talk to Your Kids About Your Cancer Diagnosis" - Daisy Melamed Sanders

  • Prevention
  • New York, NY
  • (June 01, 2019)

When you’re diagnosed with cancer, processing it is hard, and figuring out how to tell your kids about it just adds to the stress and sadness. While there’s no way around it being a difficult situation, there are steps you can take that will help make the conversation a bit easier. “It is very important that parents recognize and work on their own emotional reactions to a cancer diagnosis before speaking with their children about it,” agrees Marilia G. Neves, PsyD., who works with families affected by breast cancer at the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital. “All research suggests that honest and open communication by parents is the single most important thing that supports children in doing well when a parent has cancer,” Dr. Neves says.

— Marilia G. Neves, PsyD, Assistant Professor, Oncological Sciences, Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Learn more