In many ways, psychiatry is an important component of palliative care in general medicine: many patients with diseases of later life who are receiving palliative care will quite understandably experience mood disturbances, for example anxiety and depression.2 In psychiatry, palliative care involves accepting that certain cases of severe mental illness are chronic and cannot be remediated, and instead focusses on reducing harms and suffering, and thereby improves a person’s quality of life.3
References:
1. Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary, 10th edition. 2020.
2. Trachsel M, Irwin SA, Biller-Andorno N, et al. Palliative psychiatry for severe persistent mental illness as a new approach to psychiatry? Definition, scope, benefits, and risks. BMC Psychiatry 2016; 16: 260.
3. Westermair AL, Buchman DZ, Levitt S, et al. Palliative psychiatry in a narrow and in a broad sense: a concept clarification. Aust N Z J Psychiatry 2022; 56 (12): 1535–1541.