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Current and New Developments in Death, Dying and End-of-Life Care Policies and Practices

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End of Life and People with Intellectual and Developmental Disability

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Abstract

This chapter deals with a general introduction to death, dying and end-of-life care in the broader community, issues that will be experienced by everyone. Palliative care as a professional response to the needs of seriously ill people has been applied mainly in people with cancer and the standard health care approaches are mostly conceived for people with cancer. However, people with intellectual and developmental disability have special needs and palliative care approaches should be adapted for them. The chapter provides a context on end of life within which the situation for people with intellectual and developmental disability examined in other chapters of the book may be better understood. In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in end-of-life care research and this has resulted in important developments concerning policy and practice. The chapter will address issues such as place of death, palliative care, palliative care in the community, generalist versus specialist palliative care, public health approaches in palliative care, advance care planning, end-of-life decision-making, assisted dying (including euthanasia, assisted suicide, voluntary-assisted dying (VAD), medical assistance in dying (MAID)) and palliative sedation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. End-of-Life Care Research Group, VUB and Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Luc Deliens

  2. Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Luc Deliens

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  1. Luc Deliens
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Correspondence to Luc Deliens .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Roger J. Stancliffe

  2. School of Psychology, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Michele Y. Wiese

  3. School of Social Work, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Philip McCallion

  4. Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Mary McCarron

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Deliens, L. (2022). Current and New Developments in Death, Dying and End-of-Life Care Policies and Practices. In: Stancliffe, R.J., Wiese, M.Y., McCallion, P., McCarron, M. (eds) End of Life and People with Intellectual and Developmental Disability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98697-1_1

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