ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces palliative care within mental health. Ethics has a crucial importance in decisionmaking. The emphasis throughout is on the individual and the family. Palliative care and mental health, and other health- and social-care professionals, are driven, not only by knowledge, skills, and attitudes, but by compassion. All health and socialcare is driven by these elements, which are intrinsic in the skills needed to help in alleviating grief, hopelessness, and distress. There are many parallels to be considered in our comparisons between palliative care and mental health. The two pathways traverse and intersect, whereby creating a need for active and heartfelt listening, and for us to act on what we hear.
