Good death: responsible choice in a changing society.
Revolutionary advances in social and medical knowledge and technology have radically changed the conditions which precede death for an increasing number of people. The fear of death is being replaced by the dread of too-prolonged life, a feature of which is a widely documented incidence of both pain and physical and mental distress. This situation has produced the accelerating social demand for euthanasia (a painless inducement of death, preferably by medical means) to be legally available to a suffering person earnestly desiring it. The attitudes of medical workers are ambivalent, trapped as they are between a changing society and intransigent law. Psychiatry, however, and its concern for the whole person, is potentially an ally of those who desire to educate the community to a healthier view of death, even a planned death, as a part of life and a responsible conclusion to it.
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001293:Attitude to Death; D001315:Australia; D005065:Euthanasia; D033101:Euthanasia, Active, Voluntary; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008136:Longevity; D011570:Psychiatry; D013727:Terminal Care; D006113:United Kingdom; D014481:United States