rivka

Kissane was discussing euthanasia not assisted suicide. He deplored the lack of palliative care in the Australian situation. He described the patients as not necessarily being terminal. In contrast, 91.5% of patients who died in 2009 in Oregon were in hospice care. This means that they were screened and judged to be within 6 months of dying when they were admitted to hospice care, and had gone through some amount of interviewing and thoughtful decision-making to be admitted. Hospice facilitates and encourages palliative care of all sorts. When my father was admitted to hospice care, part of the team was a psychiatric social worker, so there is a mental health professional involved. (Of course in his case, this didn't result in any mental health care for him...he couldn't communicate by then.) So it seems like the persons involved may have felt that psychotherapy was not relevant to their situation given the other supports that were in place.