“People are trying desperately to make room for one’s inner life.”
March 24, 2021
Diane Meier, M.D., discusses how the commercialization of medicine and the fear and disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have left many Americans traumatized. Dr. Meier has been the long-time director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care in New York City; in her view, palliative care is one of the few fields of medicine that focuses on patients’ existential and spiritual suffering. She finds such clinician-patient relationship-focused work crucial, given how much pain is caused by isolation. “The fear of death,” she says, “is about the loss of relationship with the world and the people in it.”
“Covid Has Traumatized America. A Doctor Explains What We Need to Heal,” by David Marchese, New York Times