The role of psychologists in requests to hasten death: A literature and legislation review and an agenda for future research

The opportunity for patients to request support to die is legalised in several countries and is associated with the development of a social and political debate that has taken place in recent years. We believe that psychologists can contribute to this debate. Here, we conducted a literature and legislation review with the aim of understanding arguments regarding the roles of the psychologist in hastening death. A systematic review of the peer-review literature in this field was carried out. The legislation of each country with hasten death practices was analysed to understand if psychologists are included in the protocols of hasten death practices. Despite a lack of literature, we found competence assessment, communication, psychological counselling, research and training and public policy to be the possible roles of psychologists in requests to hasten death. Based on the review, an agenda for future research is developed. We highlight the importance of psychology, raising its profile in the study of the various forms of death hastening requests.     

Yerushalmi and the Conversos

In his work on Iberian Jews—openly practicing ones and conversos, on and off the peninsula, before 1492 and 1497 and after—Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi made few explicit methodological statements. But from his earliest work, he made his historiosophical commitments clear and rarely wavered from them. Those commitments included basic trust in inquisitorial sources, the investigation of both marginal and normative Jewish practices, interest in the history of mentalities, and, above all, a focus on the relationship between “immanent” and external causes in Jewish history. This article traces the influence of several mid-twentieth-century historians on Yerushalmi’s work and examines his place in twentieth-century debates on conversos and the Inquisition; it also discusses his relationship to microhistory and the problem of historical distance and perspective. The article concludes by considering the apparent contradiction between Yerushalmi’s emphasis on the agency and subjectivity of Jews and his trust in the records of an institution that some have characterized as pervasively anti-Jewish.     

Psychological therapy in primary care: work in progress

This paper considers the benefits to the mental health of patients of the provision of psychological services in primary care. I describe by means of context, the development of such a service over the last 7 years. In the following section I discuss the question of who is 'the patient' who gets referred and who can benefit from psychological treatment in a primary care setting. More specifically I consider the spectrum of psychopathology of patients who are referred in primary care for psychological help and in relation to this question I discuss what would constitute a meaningful clinical intervention. In the last section, I look at the question of what needs to be in place for a successful psychological service in a primary care setting. I argue that, while benefits for mild to moderate psychological problems have been documented by research findings, clinical scrutiny of the interventions in primary care suggest that this is not necessarily the case when it comes to patients with more severe psychological problems. I further argue that there are still important issues to be considered and researched and structures to be put into place before we can safeguard the clinical effectiveness of psychological interventions in primary care.