What Should Clinicians Know About Palliative Psychopharmacology?

The nature and scope of palliative psychiatry and associated ethical implications are debated in the literature. This article examines conceptual limitations of extant accounts of palliative psychiatry, with a focus on psychopharmacological practice, and suggests that modifiable and unmodifiable psychiatric illnesses exist on a spectrum along which broader or narrower palliative psychiatric care approaches can be outlined. The article also discusses how these approaches intersect with questions about whether and to what extent psychiatric medications have symptom-reducing or disease-modifying effects. The discussion leads to the conclusion that clinicians are ethically obliged to distinguish among and clearly formulate goals of care in a dynamic and ongoing process of shared decision making with patients.