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In an interview, Rosenfeld said he would like to see health workers incorporate more psychological and spiritual elements into palliative care,

It may just be the writer's style, or the thickheadedness of the "researchers" but "spirituality" comes across as some kind of mental trick that can be made to "work".

Like tone deaf people teaching other tone deaf people how to sing. Give them points for trying, but the discussion sounds a little stilted to me.

Makes me think of "The Silver Chair" by C.S. Lewis. As I recall, there is a scene where the children are held in a cave by a witch who enchants them and tries to convince them that the cave is the only world there is. They mention the Sun that they have seen, and the witch laughs and points to a dim lamp in the corner and says, "There is no sun, you are thinking of my lamp and imaging one that is much bigger."

This goes on for a bit, with clever parroting of modern secular humanist arguments against the spiritual world (it's obviously inspired by Plato's Cave). But in the end, the children fight back and one declares, "You may be right that there is no world outside of this cave. Perhaps there is no sky. Perhaps there is no sun. Perhaps, there is even no Aslan the great lion who redeems humanity. But I will still believe in those things. Because that world, even if false, offers me far more than anything you can offer me in this pitiful, dark, meaningless world that means so much to you."

Having a sense of spiritual well-being...appears to help terminally ill people avoid spending their last months of life in despair, according to a report released Thursday.

Funny, it does the same thing for completely healthy people as well.

He added that even patients with only a few months to live can respond to efforts to help them glean meaning and value from their lives, and it may never be too late to try. 'I think you can gain something up until the very end,' Rosenfeld said.

That's because assurance of eternal life can come at any point, even up to the very point of death.