ABSTRACT
Clinicians in palliative care are frequently presented with patients who are low in mood, unmotivated and appear to have ‘given up’. When confronted by such patients, it may be tempting to ‘explain away’ their symptoms as a natural reaction to advanced disease. Clearly, most people experiencing advanced disease will have spells of feeling sad about the many losses they face, and most especially their imminent loss of life. At what point does such sadness become the syndrome psychiatrists recognize as depression?
