Dr Trish Holch

Trish joined the Psychosocial Oncology Group in 2009 and her interests are around improving the detection and management of emotional distress in routine clinical practice. Initially funded by the NCRI Compass Collaborative she developed guidelines for oncologists to manage emotional distress in cancer patients. Further projects have included exploring health professionals’ attitudes to the use of antidepressants in clinical care and development of a training programme to enable Doctors to interpret and incorporate quality of life (QOL) data into routine consultations.

Trish’s background is in Psychology specifically Behavioural Neuroscience. She completed a PhD (2009) from the Institute of Psychological Sciences at the University of Leeds where she explored ‘the inconsistent effects of the neuropeptide PYY3-36 on appetite’. Trish attained a First class BSc (Hons) degree in Applied Psychology from the same institution (2003) and as a postgraduate she was a keen member of the Biopsychology Research Group and consolidated her teaching interests with completion of the University of Leeds Teaching Award. Following her husband’s diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer Trish changed the focus of her career to the psychosocial needs of oncology patients where she has been able to utilize both her psychological knowledge and former clinical experience as a nurse.

She is currently working on the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) eRAPID project where she is reviewing and developing items suitable for patients to self-report adverse events (AE) during cancer treatments and developing patient and clinical management advice.

+44 (0)113 206 8952