scholarly journals Grief After Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide

Crisis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 255-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Andriessen ◽  
Karolina Krysinska ◽  
Dolores Angela Castelli Dransart ◽  
Luc Dargis ◽  
Brian L. Mishara
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Study Quality ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Grief Process ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Self Reports

Abstract. Background: Several countries have regulated euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Research has looked at the experiences of patients, family, and professionals. However, little is known of the effects on bereaved individuals. Aims: We aimed to assess (a) what is known about the grief and mental health of people bereaved by euthanasia or PAS and (b) the quality of the research. Method: Systematic review according to PRISMA guidelines with searches in Cinahl, Embase, PsycINFO, Pubmed, and Scopus. Results: The searches identified 10 articles (eight studies), and the study quality was fair. People bereaved by euthanasia/PAS generally had similar or lower scores on measures of disordered grief, mental health, and posttraumatic stress compared with those who died naturally. Lack of social support and secrecy may compound their grief. Being involved in the decision-making process and having the feeling of honoring the deceased's will may facilitate their grief. Limitations: Studies used self-reports from non-random self-selected participants, were retrospective, and were conducted in only three countries. Conclusion: There is little evidence of increased risk of adverse grief or mental health outcomes in people bereaved by euthanasia/PAS. As more countries legalize assisted dying, high-quality studies of the factors that may hinder or facilitate the grief process are needed.

scholarly journals Euthanasia and suicide: a medical and social discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-112
Author(s):  
V. N. Ostapenko ◽  
I. V. Lantukh ◽  
A. P. Lantukh
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Adequate Quality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Strong Explosion ◽  
The Right

Annotation. The problem of suicide and euthanasia has been particularly updated with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a strong explosion of suicide, because medicine was not ready for it, and the man was too weak in front of its pressure. The article considers the issue of euthanasia and suicide based on philosophical messages from the position of a doctor, which today goes beyond medicine and medical ethics and becomes one of the important aspects of society. Medicine has achieved success in the continuation of human life, but it is unable to ensure the quality of life of those who are forced to continue it. In these circumstances, the admission of suicide or euthanasia pursues the refusal of the subject to achieve an adequate quality of life; an end to suffering for those who find their lives unacceptable. The reasoning that banned suicide: no one should harm or destroy the basic virtues of human nature; deliberate suicide is an attempt to harm a person or destroy human life; no one should kill himself. The criterion may be that suicide should not take place when it is committed at the request of the subject when he devalues his own life. According to supporters of euthanasia, in the conditions of the progress of modern science, many come to the erroneous opinion that medicine can have total control over human life and death. But people have the right to determine the end of their lives while using the achievements of medicine, as well as the right to demand an extension of life with the help of the same medicine. They believe that in the era of a civilized state, the right to die with medical help should be as natural as the right to receive medical care. At the same time, the patient cannot demand death as a solution to the problem, even if all means of relieving him from suffering have been exhausted. In defense of his claims, he turns to the principle of beneficence. The task of medicine is to alleviate the suffering of the patient. But if physician-assisted suicide and active euthanasia become part of health care, theoretical and practical medicine will be deprived of advances in palliative and supportive therapies. Lack of adequate palliative care is a medical, ethical, psychological, and social problem that needs to be addressed before resorting to such radical methods as legalizing euthanasia.

scholarly journals Immunological Interfaces: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Depression

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Perlmutter
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Depressive Symptomatology ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Health Care Infrastructure ◽  
Inflammatory State ◽  
Extra Pulmonary ◽  
Detrimental Impact

Since the start of the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, an international effort has sought to better characterize associated extra-pulmonary health sequelae. The acute and or chronic detrimental impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on mental health, especially depression, is increasingly described. Simultaneously the pandemic has influenced depressive symptomatology by modifying economic, social and political structures, in addition to affecting daily routines. In both cases, associated immunological perturbations favoring a pro-inflammatory state could underlie an increased risk for depressive symptomatology. A resultant elevation in global depressive burden could further tax mental health care infrastructure and contribute to a range of worse health outcomes including diminished quality of life. This suggests a critical and time-sensitive need to better understand immune interfaces between depression and COVID-19.

Physical health in schizophrenia: a challenge for antipsychotic therapy

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (S2) ◽  
pp. S6-S11 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Heald
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Physical Health ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Psychotic Symptoms ◽  
Antipsychotic Therapy ◽  
Metabolic Monitoring ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Physical Health Problems

AbstractIn the management of schizophrenia, mental health outcomes are the principal focus of treatment. The objective is to control the psychotic symptoms while minimising negative features of the illness, to achieve an overall improvement in the societal functioning of patients. Physical health is also important because if it is compromised, many of the benefits of improved mental health will be offset. Compared with the general population, schizophrenia patients are at increased risk of weight gain, abdominal obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. These physical health problems can contribute to the decreased quality of life, lowered self-esteem and reduced life expectancy commonly reported in schizophrenia. For these reasons there is a pressing need to improve both the monitoring and the management of physical health in patients with schizophrenia as a part of their overall care. A consensus for metabolic monitoring of patients receiving treatment with antipsychotic drugs is available. However, the practicing clinician requires guidance about management of physical health in routine clinical practice. This should include recommendations for measurements that have strong predictive value about physical health risks yet are easy to make, and about the use of medications that have the least effect on physical health parameters. This article will review the gravity of the physical health risks facing schizophrenia patients.

Early life family disadvantages and major depression in adulthood

1999 ◽  
Vol 174 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartwin S. Sadowski ◽  
Blanca Ugarte ◽  
Israel Kolvin ◽  
Carole E. Kaplan ◽  
Jacqueline Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Major Depressive Disorder ◽  
Major Depression ◽  
Depressive Disorder ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Major Depressive ◽  
Adult Depression ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Quality Of Parenting

BackgroundThere is evidence that exposure to social and family disadvantages in childhood are a risk factor for adult depression.AimsTo explore the effects of multiple adversity in early childhood on adult depression, and the relative effects of the different adversities.MethodThis study utilises data from the Newcastle Thousand Family Study. Information on childhood disadvantages was collected when the participants were 5 years old, and information on mental health was gathered when they were 33 years old. Mental health data were scrutinised blind to the evidence of early disadvantage, and best-estimate diagnoses of major depressive disorder were made according to DSM–III–R criteria.ResultsMultiple family disadvantages in childhood substantially increase the risk of suffering a major depressive disorder in adulthood. Such disadvantages include family or marital relationship instability, a combination of poor mothering and poor physical care, and a combination of dependence on social welfare and overcrowding. For females major depression was linked in particular to the quality of parenting in early life.ConclusionsSocial and family (especially multiple family) disadvantages during childhood predispose individuals to an increased risk of major depression in adulthood.

scholarly journals Pengetahuan Mahasiswa Prodi Kedokteran FK UNS Tentang Kesehatan Jiwa, Orang dengan Gangguan Jiwa dan Undang-Undang yang Melindunginya

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Khofifah A
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Treatment ◽  
Productivity Loss ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Care Staff ◽  
Health Care Staff ◽  
Increased Risk

Humans always seen as a united whole of elements of the body, soul, social, not only emphasis on disease but on improving the quality of life, consisting of well-being of body, soul and productivity of social economy. Mental disorders are a leading cause of the global burden of disease, and the provision of mental health services in developing countries remains very limited and far from equitable. . Stigmatization of the mentally ill has a long tradition, and the word “stigmatization” itself indicates the negative connotations Worldwide, more than 70% of young people and adults with mental illness do not receive any mental health treatment from health care staff. Untreated mental health and substance use disorders are associated with pre-mature mortality, productivity loss, high rates of disability, and increased risk forchronic disease.

scholarly journals Quality of Life Assessments in Individuals With Young-Onset Dementia and Their Caregivers

2020 ◽  
pp. 089198872093334
Author(s):  
Divyansh Dixit ◽  
John Spreadbury ◽  
Rosanna Orlando ◽  
Elaine Hayward ◽  
Christopher Kipps
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Caregiver Burden ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
Single Item ◽  
Proxy Reports ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Young Onset Dementia

Background: Quality of life (QoL) has seldom been investigated or explicitly measured in young-onset dementia (YoD). The aims of this study were (1) to investigate and compare QoL self- and proxy reports in a sample of YoD patients and caregivers using different conceptual assessments of QoL and (2) to examine the relationship between caregiver QoL and both burden and mental health. Methods: There were 52 participants (26 YoD patient–caregiver dyads). The design was cross-sectional and part of a larger longitudinal prospective cohort study of YoD patients and caregivers. Primary measures included generic QoL (World Health Organization Quality of Life–short version [WHOQOL-BREF]), dementia-specific QoL (Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s Disease Scale [QoL-AD]), health-related QoL (EQ5D), and a single-item QoL measure. Secondary measures included caregiver burden (Zarit Burden Index), mental health (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), and dementia severity (Clinical Dementia Rating). Results: Patient QoL self-reports were higher than caregiver proxy reports on the QoL-AD ( P = .001). Patient QoL self-reports for the WHOQOL-BREF ( P < .01) and single-item QoL ( P < .05) measure were significantly higher than caregiver self-reports. Dementia severity had no relationship with QoL self-reports. Caregiver burden, anxiety, and depression were negatively correlated with QoL when measured using a generic and single-item measure, but not with the health-related measure. Discussion: Patients and caregivers show a disparity in QoL reports, with patients tending to report higher QoL. Caregiver burden, anxiety, and depression should be areas targeted for interventions when supporting caregivers.

The Beginning and Ending of Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 162-171
Author(s):  
John Keown
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Medical Law ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Life Sustaining Treatment ◽  
The Law

This chapter identifies several respects in which medical law in England and Wales suffers from a lack of ethical coherence in relation to its protection of human life. It argues that it is philosophically incoherent for the law to calibrate its protection of human life according to arbitrary stages of human development such as birth, viability, the fourteenth day after fertilization, and implantation. To the extent that the law permits life-sustaining treatment to be withheld or withdrawn from incompetent patients on the ground that their ‘quality of life’ is insufficient, and even with an intent to hasten death, it again displays ethical incoherence. If legislators or judges were to make it lawful for physicians to intentionally assist suicidal refusals of treatment, or to endorse a right to physician-assisted suicide for the ‘terminally ill’, the law's ethical incoherence would be seriously aggravated.

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