ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the prevalence of suicide in palliative care settings, factors that contribute to it, and potential interventions both to prevent it as well as to cope with the trauma that completed suicides have on family and significant others. It is consistent with the statistics of suicide in general, which shows that a previous suicide attempt greatly increases the risk of completed suicide. Prolonged suffering caused by poorly controlled symptoms may lead to such desperation, and it is the appropriate role of the palliative care team to provide effective management of physical and psychological symptoms as an alternative to desire for death, suicides, or requests for assisted suicide by their patient. It may present as a passive wish for death, the decision to forego aggressive therapy that could alter survival outcomes, the decision to discontinue life-prolonging treatment, suicidal ideation, or a request for physician-assisted suicide.
