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The majority of those providing palliative care and support agree that the family should be encouraged to play a practical role. However, based on a clinical case, followed by a discussion, this intervention is seen to be disruptive and causes concern. When a serious illness has been diagnosed, it exemplifies the extent to which badly channelled intrafamilial communication can interfere with the care and support of a person in palliative care. This role (negative in our case) was a massive gamble that dragged the patient into a depressive state, upsetting her mental balance and complicating the task of providing palliative care towards a peaceful end. In this case, the team was obliged to modulate the family’s involvement in order to make the death as close to ideal as possible. At the end of our discussion, the question was raised of how to educate the Cameroonian people about the modern approach to palliative care.