I hope that the physicians who seek to cure life-threatening diseases will develop a closer collaboration with palliative care physicians. The answer I have received from some oncologists is that they simply don t know much about palliative care. That isn t their specialty. Bringing palliative concerns into the patient s life sooner will, no doubt, reduce the demand for physician-assisted suicide. Physical distress is not the only kind of pain associated with life-threatening illness and other debilitating conditions.
Many patients understandably become depressed.
In fact, experts believe that the overwhelming majority of those who seek physician-assisted suicide are, in fact, clinically depressed. One could view this suffering as another of the monsters allegedly created by modern medicine. Instead, we should look at depression as one more condition which physicians can combat with ever-increasing effectiveness. More often than not, the patient who seeks a physician s assistance in committing suicide really needs a good psychiatrist. With the right combination of medication and therapy, the anguish of depression, like physical pain, can almost always be alleviated.