A clinical catharsis: Moral distress and the uses of tragedy in palliative care

[...]that tragedy offers two primary methods of responding to this distress: emotional catharsis and ethical reflection. Creon also learns that his wife, Eurydice, has taken her life as well, and the king is led away in sorrow and confusion: “I know not which way I should bend my gaze, or where I should seek support; for all is amiss with that which is in my hands” (Jebb, 2019). Creon, on the other hand, fixated on the “abstract integrity of the civilized order,” ultimately “disregards the equal importance of the family's integrity for the survival of the state,” and one can hardly imagine that Thebes is better off for his civic obsessions (van den Berge, 2017). Yet the ancient Greek notion of Fate hangs over all of this, and we are led to wonder whether the characters have any choice over their actions, as the chorus sings that “mortals have no escape from destined woe” (Jebb, 2019). [...]we see that both tragedy and moral distress involve suffering, constraint, and the problem of acting simultaneously for and against one's ethical convictions. Palliative care may promote this hope by using tragedy as an art form, a mode of ethical training, and a method to connect after much disconnection.