Mental health of the psychologist working with the palliative care in Brazil

Abstract

Palliative Care (PC) corresponds to the multidisciplinary practice of relieving pain and suffering in patients with progressive, chronic, incurable diseases or end-stage diseases or those of their families. This care aims to understand the patient in his or her full dimension, as a human being, to provide him with a better quality of life, mitigating and controlling symptoms of diseases caused by illness of a psychic, physical, organic, social, and spiritual nature, as long as there is life. The purpose of this study is to provide answers regarding the mental health of the psychologist when dealing with all the uncertainties, how he deals with the limitation of medicine, with the recognition of the uselessness of the treatment, with the acceptance of the death of his patient, with the difficulty of communicating the death to the family. The methodology used for the present work was bibliographic research, through the review of scientific articles published in certain platforms, such as SciELO, LILACS and Google Scholar, with the use of keywords to filter the publications and appropriate use. From the data obtained, it was concluded that, although it is a relevant and necessary subject, there is a scarcity of research in Brazil about the mental health of the Psychology professional and that there is still a predominance of the medical and technicist view, with a limited and retrograde perspective on "dying", without data that prove a better performance of the psychologist to deal with the finitude of life.