Abstract
Patients’ mental health status is an important element of palliative and end-of-life care. However, depression is often under-recognised in terminally ill cancer patients. That is because symptoms of depression can mimic those of advanced cancer and clinicians often think that patients’ low mood is an understandable reaction to terminal illness. Depression has been associated with patients desiring a hastened death or requesting assisted suicide. Nurses are often the health professional with whom patients discuss thoughts about dying. However, nurses do not always know how best to respond to patients when they say that they want to die. When faced with desire for hastened death (DHD), it is essential that nurses assess patients for symptoms that may be indicative of depression. This article will provide an overview of the main signs and symptoms of depression. It will discuss DHD among terminally ill cancer patients and whether DHD is a clinical indicator of depression. It will then examine how nurses (working in hospitals, care homes and the community) could respond to expressions of DHD. Conflicts of interest: none
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