The Spirituality of Compassion: A Public Health Response to Ageing and End-of-Life Care

Abstract

SUMMARY The recent revival of interest in spirituality in later life marks a significant step forward in the person-centred care of ageing people. The benefits will, however, be of limited value if we do not attend to the settings in which spirituality is to be lived. In contemporary society many aged people are located in environments unsympathetic to spiritual belief and practice. Health care settings focus on professionally-assessed physical needs and are dominated by concerns about the cost of services. The national social policies that direct health care services and less directly shape older people's place in contemporary society are strongly influenced by globalised neoliberal economic policies characterised by individualism, competition, and greed. For robust and viable spirituality to develop at the individual level we need compassionate social policies that support interdependence within communities and between nations.