PSYC 3570 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Palliative Care, Virtual Reality, Interpersonal Relationship
10 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Futile medical procedures perpetuate the health care system"s unwillingness to face the reality of dying and death can even constitute a kind of assault on the patient in which respect and dignity lose out. Whatever else the good death might be, it is more likely to occur within a supportive interpersonal framework and without medical interventions that are both futile and alienating. Meanings that have been given to death: death is an enfeebled form of life, death is a continuation of life, death is a perpetual development, death is waiting, death is cycling and recycling. A long life has become more attractive for many people. Throughout world history, people often feared growing old because of possible infirmity, suffering, and abandonment - death was often a release from this. Suicide has been one way of acting on the feeling that life can be cured by death.
