Sidney Bindemann (SB)
Rev Dr Sidney Bindemann BScEcon, MSc, CSci, PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS, who departed this world on the 8th of August, aged 87, was a retired clinical psychologist and United Reformed Church (URC) minister, who was rightly regarded as a founding figure within the modern discipline of psycho-oncology.
It was back in the 1970s that SB was appointed Principal Clinical Psychologist to the Department of Clinical Oncology within the University of Glasgow. This was the first full-time appointment of its kind in the UK. Cancer Research UK (then CRC) described his research activities of those days as “innovative and pioneering”.
Paying tribute in the Herald obituary, Professor Sir Kenneth Calman, Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, said: “The Department of Oncology was established at the University of Glasgow in 1974. It was an exciting time in caring for cancer patients as new procedures and treatments were just being developed.
“But central to the work of the Department was to recognise that patients, and their families, had significant experience of cancer and that we could learn from them how things could be improved.
Sid Bindemann was an essential part of this process by finding out just how useful this knowledge could be and using this to improve patient care and quality of life. His own background in psychology was particularly helpful and he had an important role in this process.
This was pioneering work in which Sid had an important role, and improved the lives of patients with cancer, not just in Glasgow but beyond.”
His innovative and pioneering techniques and strategies were often transformational and helped many to live their best life during the most challenging of circumstances. Even in 2020, when he was in frail health, but still determined to positively contribute to the wellbeing of cancer patients and their relatives, he published a book (available via Amazon) he had written some years before, entitled “Living and Coping with Cancer…..Help and Support Through Letters from a Friend”.
In the words of Professor of Cancer Medicine at Oxford University, Professor David Kerr, “This book will contribute to improving the quality of life and mental health of cancer patients around the globe”.
To give you, the visitor to Coalfacecaring, a flavour of the very person-centred style with which Dr Bindemann wrote his book here are a few pages from this book for you to read:
To purchase a copy of “Living and Coping with Cancer…..Help and Support Through Letters from a Friend”, priced at £11.99, please go to Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Coping-Cancer-Support-through/dp/1916310907/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bindemann&qid=1600849208&sr=8-1
A pioneer in psychosocial oncology
Dr Bindemann was a founding (and the first) UK member of the EORTC Quality of Life
Study Group, as well as of the European Society of Psychosocial Oncology (ESPO; later to become the European Federation EFPOS). He was similarly a founding member of the British Psycho-oncology Society (BPOS) and was elected to “life” membership in 1999 in recognition of his services to the Society in particular and psycho-oncology in general. He also held the office of hon. senior lecturer of a number of years in the University of Glasgow’s Oncology Department, Faculty of Medicine.
For many years before retirement, he served as consultant clinical psychologist at the Beatson Oncology Centre (BOC), Glasgow and Director of the Phoenix Cancer Foundation (a Scottish Cancer Charity at that time). Even when well into his eights and up until he died Dr Bindemann retained a current and lively interest in all matters concerning both valid assessment and active proliferation of Quality of Life ,especially in patients living through serious and life-threatening illnesses.
Of much of that period SB recalls, “Over a time span of several years, some 300 new cancer patients (in addition to those already in attendance) were being referred to my clinics year-on-year, by GPs, hospital and hospice doctors. They hailed from widely differing social, economic, academic and cultural backgrounds, young and not so young, each possessing his/her unique temperament, personality and personal life story. Thus there accrued in the conventional way, e.g. via clinic notes etc., an abundance of relevant and rich experience of and encounter with patients in need. Add to this my own tendency (with the present task of writing to you very much in mind) to painstakingly collate and annotate such first hand experience of patients; and the basis for and rationale of a volume of this kind becomes readily apparent.
References to conversations with specific patients are authentic and genuine in their entirety. However, names (as well as other identifying characteristics/features) have been changed throughout to preserve confidentiality and anonymity. Quote marks are employed in the conventional way, i.e. in order to indicate actual verbal response/reaction. Although I am unable to claim absolute literal accuracy to the precise word and letter in every instance, ready access to patients’ records, together with personal notes gathered and a good memory, have combined to ensure integrity in sense and meaning of every such reference.” All entries to this website are subject to and consistent with UK Copyright law. (C)SB
Neil Bindemann PhD
2025 marks 10 years of travelling a path which he has come to see is a ‘pathless path to seek the healer within’. Over those 10 years that journey within has lead to him to keep this website alive and to contribute to it. The decision to do so was take when that life reset button was hit and he was faced with a choice of two paths.
Those paths were to be either a creator of wellness, rather than to become a victim of illness, after life-saving neurosurgery for tumour on the pineal gland in his brain. The tumour, which they found during tests for a suspected neurological condition, had grown to a point that it blocked the flow of CSF through the brain.
Over those 10 years he has been feeling through trauma-informed senses to rewild his mind and body. During the time he has been applying that learning to his immunology (BSc) and neurosciences (PhD) education and research and now focuses on applying a person-centred lifestyle neuro-immunology approach to help rebalance a person’s emotional health.
That work has included evolving the Primary care and Community Neurology Society www.p-cns.org.uk, into the first ever Person-Centred society that focuses on lifestyle neuroscience – still know as the P-CNS. Then in 2022 launching the Lifestyle Health Foundation www.lifestylehealth.org.uk, with great friend and Lifestyle Medicine practitioner, Graham Stephens www.woodworktowellness.com