The issues of the meaning of life at its end
Abstract
Man assigns a different meaning to events that take place in his life. The meaning of life is defined in many ways but it should be noted that it is individual and private matter for each person. Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote that “find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man”. The results of many studies showed that there is a positive relationship between meaning of life and quality of life. The issues of meaning of life seems to be particularly important in the context of palliative care, which aims to improve the quality of patients’ life.
The feeling of helplessness, anxiety and existential distress in terminally ill patients presents challenges for palliative care providers. The results of Polish studies showed that in case of oncology patients there is a negative correlation between length of being ill and meaning of life. In recent years, experts suggested an introduction of a new clinical diagnosis in palliative care — demoralization syndrome (the state which contains: meaninglessness, purposelessness; hopelessness and helplessness). David Kissane and his co-workers from Monash University proposed a set of diagnostic criteria for diagnosing this syndrome. It can help better recognizing and differentiating palliative care patients’ problems and also designing more adequate therapeutic interventions.
Keywords: meaning of lifedemoralizationquality of lifedepression
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