Breitbart has been the chief of psychiatry at MSKCC since 1996, and was the director of the ACGME Accredited Fellowship Training Program in Psychosomatic Medicine there. He has been vice-chairman of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at MSKCC since 2009, and was named interim chairman in June 2012. In October 2014 Breitbart was appointed chairman of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, and holds the Jimmie C Holland Chair in Psychiatric Oncology at MSKCC. 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 attention to the terminally ill patients’ desire for hastened death, he began to study 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 of suffering. Breitbart also 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". 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. == Honors and awards ==