| In a related podcast, Joyce Dubensky, of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, discusses what happens when medicine and religion interact, and how you can provide religiously conscious care |
A 64-year-old woman with recurrent major depression has been seeing a community psychiatrist for about a year. She has had a moderately good response to an antidepressant and monthly supportive therapy. At her most recent visit, the patient was visibly distressed when she came into the office and began crying soon after she sat down. Through her tears she told the psychiatrist she had been diagnosed with breast cancer a week ago and was terrified she would die of the disease as her mother had. The psychiatrist listened empathically and tried to be comforting but could not seem to console the patient and so asked her what she thought might help her cope with the diagnosis. The woman suddenly looked up at the psychiatrist and said, "What would really be helpful is if you could just pray with me. That would calm me down." The psychiatrist himself was not religious but recognized that the patient's spirituality was a source of strength for her.
Is it ethically justifiable for the psychiatrist to pray with the patient in this "bad news" situation?
We invite you listen to this podcast, in which ethicist and psychiatrist Cynthia Geppert, MD, PhD, tackles the ethical considerations when a patient asks you to pray along.
