ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about those situations which healthcare professionals might have found challenging. Many doctors find the terminal illness area to be one of the most challenging they have to deal with in medical practice. Healthcare professionals will most probably find some additional skills 'popping up' unexpectedly for their use not only in other parts of the consultation, but also in other areas of their life. There are certain meta-program patterns that seem to go along with depression, and in combination they can give a less than useful response to the vicissitudes of life. They tend to be past oriented, move away froms, big-picture generalists, emotive feelers, reactive to circumstances, swayed by externals, and procedural to boot. Depression is primarily a past-oriented condition whereby an excessive focus on previous problems frames the present and future.
