Psycho-Oncology

Jimmie Holland was born Jimmie Coker in Forney, Texas on April 9, 1928. She received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University and a medical degree Baylor College of Medicine. She taught psychiatry at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1956 to 1973 and practiced at Edward J. Meyer Memorial Hospital in Buffalo from 1958 to 1972. After serving as a consultant on a joint Soviet-American schizophrenia research study in Moscow in 1972, she taught and practiced at Montefiore Hospital of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. She joined Memorial Sloan Kettering in 1977.

She was a pioneer the field of psycho-oncology, which is treating the emotional distress of cancer patients while their medical symptoms are addressed. She helped establish a division of psychiatry at Sloan Kettering. She was chief of the psychiatry service until 1996 and chairwoman of the department of psychiatry until 2003. She also taught at Weill Cornell medical school. Her book, The Human Side of Cancer written with Sheldon Lewis, was published in 2000. She died from complications of cardiovascular disease on December 24, 2017 at the age of 89.

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