Palliative Care: Spiritual & Psychological Counselling

A patient in severe symptomatic distress will not listen to any amount of psychological counseling. So it is most important to relieve the patient symptomatically and thereafter sort out the emotional issues. Most of the patients experiencing an incurable illness go through a lot of psychological and emotional changes from the time of diagnosis to progression of disease and terminal phase. Main psychological issues are feeling of hopelessness, neglect, loss of control, fear, anger, anxiety, depression, guilt and spiritual pain. When a person is diagnosed with a life limiting incurable illness he undergoes a psychological storm in the form of shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and then finally may or may not accept the disease. The manner and nature of death varies with the psychological state of the patient. Therefore a psychological and spiritual counselor goes with the palliative care team to handle the emotional problems of the patient.

It is important to take care of psychological issues as it is to manage physical symptomatic issues.