Brief Supportive Psychotherapy for a Patient with Chronic Schizophrenia Who is Dying.

Psychiatrists can offer much in the care of the person who is chronically mentally ill and who is dying of a medical illness. In community psychiatry, the psychiatrist and other members of the treatment team often care for a patient over many years, and gradually learn about a patient's wishes and preferences, strengths and limitations, areas of support, and lack thereof. A psychiatrist can combine this knowledge and understanding with a capacity for empathy in order to provide many of the necessary elements for palliative care, including psychotherapy, during the final phases of our patients' lives. The composite case presented in this article is the second installment about the treatment of a gentleman with chronic schizophrenia who was enrolled in hospice after his pulmonary and cardiac disease began to progress rapidly, and who believed that God and the devil were arguing over his eternal fate.