Wise Counsel Podcasts

Hanno Kirk on End of Life Care. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Hanno Kirk, LICSW, Ph.D. had a successful Army and political policy career before deciding to retrain as a social worker and focus his career on end-of-life care. In the United States, the dying process has become highly medicalized such that some 80% of people die in hospitals (contrasted to 80% of people dying at home 50 years ago). Death has become more hidden and taboo than in the past, and younger people have little experience with it. Several consequences of this shift in how people die are that people put off planning for their own dying process, failing to set up advanced directives, and that dying people are offered more interventions designed to prolong their lives, often without careful thought as to how these interventions will affect the quality of life remaining. Life extension is a fine goal for otherwise healthy people, but w