Dr. Karen L. Weihs, MD

Expert Publications

• Can addressing family relationships improve outcomes in chronic disease? Report of the National Working Group on Family-Based Interventions in Chronic Disease.
• Continuation phase treatment with bupropion SR effectively decreases the risk for relapse of depression.
• The effects of age and emotional acceptance on distress among breast cancer patients.
• Naturalistically observed swearing, emotional support, and depressive symptoms in women coping with illness.
• Considerations of culture and social class for families facing cancer: the need for a new model for health promotion and psychosocial intervention.
• "Like a Mexican wedding": psychosocial intervention needs of predominately Hispanic low-income female co-survivors of cancer.
• Un Abrazo Para La Familia: providing low-income Hispanics with education and
• Cardiac vagal control as a prospective predictor of anxiety in women diagnosed with breast cancer.
• Linguistic indicators of patient, couple, and family adjustment following breast cancer.
• Information and support for co-survivors during or after cancer treatment: Consideration of Un Abrazo Para la Familia as a model for family-focused intervention in cancer rehabilitation.
• Cancer conversations in context: naturalistic observation of couples coping with breast cancer.
• The Interplay of Stress and Attachment in Individuals Weathering Loss of Employment.
• A longitudinal examination of re-employment quality on internalizing symptoms and job-search intentions.
• Affective agnosia: Expansion of the alexithymia construct and a new opportunity to integrate and extend Freud's legacy.
• Feasibility of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) for breast cancer survivors: a randomized, wait list controlled pilot study.

Media Releases

Get to know Psychiatrist Dr. Karen L. Weihs, who serves patients in Arizona.

As a trusted and sought-after psychiatrist, Dr. Weihs is committed to treating each patient with respect and compassion. She is a Comprehensive Member & the Coordinator of Psychosocial Support and PsychoOncology Services for the Arizona Cancer Center. 

As such, she has an ongoing program of psychosocial intervention research, where she also has an active clinical practice of psychiatric care for cancer patients embedded with the multidisciplinary team. She collaborates with intervention scientists to test innovative approaches to psychosocial interventions for breast cancer patients. She has conducted three prospective longitudinal studies to determine the impact of emotional and interpersonal processes on medical, psychiatric, functional, and quality of life outcomes in breast cancer patients. These studies enrolled 179, 140, and 460(two sites) subjects with multiple occasions of in depth data collection over 1 – 3 years with seven year follow-up for disease outcomes.

Advancing medicine through academics and excellent patient care, Dr. Weihs holds privileges at Banner – University Medical Center South & Banner – University Medical Center Tucson. At the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, she serves as a Professor of Psychiatry and as an Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine.

At the start of her academic career, Dr. Weihs graduated with her medical degree from Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine in 1979. She then went on to perform her residencies in family medicine at WellSpan York Hospital and Hunterdon Medical Center. This was followed working as a faculty person in Family Medicine at Brown University where she studied improved approaches to teaching interviewing skills to physicians. She then undertook a residency in psychiatry and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in 1989 and 1991, respectively.

With over four decades of experience, she is board-certified in psychiatry & hospice and palliative medicine by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN). The ABPN is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to serving the professions of psychiatry and neurology.

Furthermore, she was  board-certified in family medicine by the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) from 1982 to 2018. The ABFM is a non-profit, independent medical association of American physicians who practice in family medicine and its sub-specialties.

Dr. Weihs’ research focuses on family processes and emotion regulation as they affect both mental health and disease progression in patients with cancer and end stage renal disease. She has written and lectured widely on family influences on medical illness. 

Additionally, she is an experienced psychopharmacology researcher, focusing on pharmacologic interventions for anxiety and depressive disorders in children, adolescents, and adults. At the Center for Family Research, she collaborated on prevention studies of children of depressed parents and children in families stressed by parental unemployment. Her research included a longitudinal study of marital quality in breast cancer patients, examining oxytocin as a mediator of the salutary effects of close personal relationship on disease progression. This was a five-year study funded by the Army Medical Research Program in Breast Cancer Research. 

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behavior, cognition, and perceptions. Psychiatrists evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. They conduct thorough psychiatric evaluations, develop treatment plans, prescribe medication, and evaluate treatment results.

Among Dr. Weih’s awards and honors include: The Outstanding Clinical Care Award, American Psychosocial Oncology Society, 2008; Who’s Who Among Executives and Professionals “Honors Edition”, 2008-2009; and Senior Women’s Health Scholar, Women’s Center of Excellence, University of Arizona, 2009.

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