An Examination of Death Attitudes in Contemporary UK Society: A Report

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes death and dying in the UK.

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................................1
WHERE AND WHEN PEOPLE DIE IN UK........................................................................................................1
EXPERIENCE OF DYEING...............................................................................................................................2
DENIAL OF DEATH THESIS............................................................................................................................3
CRITICISM OF DENIAL OF DEATH THESIS.....................................................................................................5
BEREAVEMENT AND MOURNING................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................................8
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INTRODUCTION
Death is defined as the ultimate end of life. It is the concept that is recognized since the
existence of living things on earth (Baudrillard, 2016). Every living being has a set period of the
cycle that is called life and it has to live it and direct towards the ultimate end that is death.
Human beings are also mortal and have to face death when their lie is about to end. Dyeing is a
natural phenomenon and if seen otherwise it is necessary as birth and death balance the
existence of humankind in this world. Ageing is the process that correlates with death, as the
person ages he or she is confined to be closer to attain death. It is usually seen that in the
contemporary world death is not a subject that is talked about or discussed a lot. Even after
being such an inevitable concern no one in this modern era likes to talk about death. Even the
thinking and societal stigma have portrayed death to be a taboo. In this assignment, various
discussions will be done to highlight the philosophies regarding death, the shift of perception in
society regarding death and decline of death thesis. The assignment will also highlight the ways
how people die and the cause of death as well as where people die in the UK. Critical analysis
will be done regarding the decline of death thesis and the assignment will conclude why death
is portrayed as taboo in today's world.
WHERE AND WHEN PEOPLE DIE IN UK
Every culture religion and belief associated with them differ regarding the concepts of death
and birth. Death is focused as an important process in most of the religion and the presence of
religious aspects while experiencing death is meant to be essential in some culture. In the UK
every year about 598,694 that is 9.4 people per 1000 person dies. This rate shows us that as
many births are taking place in the world the balance of death is on roll to manage the
equilibrium. Previously death was perceived better as due to wars, attacks, diseases and
medieval era death was something that a person was afraid of and was waiting for (Bury, 2013).
As technology has advanced and the Victorian era is no more existing the life expectancy has
increased with changing the perception of people regarding death. In early age, it was seen that
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the majority of death occurred at patient's home or care home. As the shift in perception has
occurred it is evident that nowadays most of the people dying are reported to chase death in
hospitals or care centres under palliative care. It is also seen that three in five people in the UK
prefers to die at home that makes the ratio of people dying at home higher. According to a
survey it is seen that previously in 1960 50% f people died in hospital whereas 42.1 per cent
died at own home but till the year 1991 around 64.7% people died in hospitals and 25.7% died
at their home (Jupp, 2016). This shows the people in the UK are aware of palliative care and
prefer to die in a hospital or care centre under the care rather at home. One more reason for
this shift is the people at the hospital are not waiting to die but they are taking appropriate
treatment with the hope of getting better and enhance their life expectancy. It is also seen that
in recent some years again the downward trend of people preferring to die at home is
increasing and some people yet still prefer to die at home. Another reason identified for this is
the religious belief, some Korean and Japanese culture believe that dying in the hospital does
not allow the soul to return and gets trapped so they prefer to die at home rather than at an
end of life care (Chapple, Ziebland and Hawton, 2015).
EXPERIENCE OF DYEING
Experience of dying is referred to the long cycle of death that a person experiences while he is
about to die. Since a person is diagnosed with a life ending disease till he achieves death the
phase has different sections that are explained well by the famous psychiatrist Kubler Ross.
Kubler Ross explained the experience of dying in five phases that a person experience since he
gets to know about his death. These five phases are known as denial, anger, bargaining,
depression and acceptance (Bailey and Yates, 2013).
Denial is the foremost phase that is explained how a person knowing he is going to die does not
accept the fact and finds the loos to deny that his life is going to end one day soon.
Anger is another stage of this theory that is explained when a person shifts from denial mode to
anger by asking “why me”? The person often keeps on hammering on the fact that why he is
being chosen to die and his frustration can be moulded into his behaviour and actions.
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Bargaining is the third stage where a person starts to bargain with the fate by making deals
such as asking destiny or death to hold on till a particular event he wants to attain. This is the
stage where a person starts to shift his denial towards acceptance.
Depression is the stage where a person undergoes various mental changes and psychological
changes that make them weaker, restless, and the sense of recovery from this point fades.
Acceptance is marked by the end of struggle where the person accepts his condition and
silently waits for his death. This stage is usually characterized by the closeness of the individual
with spirituality and religious activities (Friedman and James, 2008).
Kubler Ross explained how a dying person perceives death to be their failure and they at initial
stages are not ready to accept it rather deny it. Till the person attains acceptance for their
death their physical and cognitive functioning is lost to a great level as well the person also
stops struggling with the life and urge to live.
DENIAL OF DEATH THESIS
In modern society, death is considered as a taboo that no one likes or chose to converse about.
Denial of death thesis explains this in a manner that how today population is not knowing the
true concept of death and they deny death to the very extensive stage. Death is a natural
process as birth but yet it is highly discriminated and people who discuss death are considered
to be negative elements in society. Death is not something that is hidden every day in a
newspaper or social media or other sources we hear and see death yet people today are not
ready to accept it openly (Corr, Corr, and Doka, 2018). Every human being has a different power
to handle such events in their life and most of them cannot handle death and so the easiest
way out they assume is to run from it and deny it. Denying death will not change its reality
rather it will just leave us unprepared and unplanned for the coming death. Past experiences of
people suffering the death of family members and loved ones can have such a severe effect on
their mental state that they avoid talking about it. Man today is so busy building their lives and
great future that the exploration of death and preparing for death is often left. Modern era and
medicine are mostly concerned with increasing the longevity of life and not focused on death
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thou death is still a fact that every person has to face. In denial of death, the thesis is stated
that death is usually confined to a hospital bed and hidden in care homes and people do not
know how to mourn and usually this leads a dying person to undergo loneliness and
bereavement for the others.
Denial of death thesis is modulated by different writers the chief of them is Aries who used the
concept of “tamed death” from medieval times and correlated it to “forbidden death” in
modern times. He explained how in earlier times people were aware of their death and
accepted it openly as they use to see their loved ones dying and were aware of the whole
phenomenon (Friedman and James, 2008). The average age of man in early time was 45 years
that is half of the expected age in the modern era. This shift from an increase in life expectancy
has made people deny death or rather explained by Aries is to forbid the death. In early times
people use to fear death less and accept the death of any person better than people do now.
Aries blamed the conclusion of forbidden death in modern society on doctors as they were the
one to replace priest in early times and provided technological advancements to cure the illness
that made people think they can control death. He explained how in modern society doctors
and medical science has segregated death by not discussing it with dyeing person eve it is seen
that doctors and health care professionals do not discuss condition of dying person in front of
them to avoid psychological implications and this was identified to be a cause by Aries for
denial of death in modern society (Gilmore, Schafer, and Halcrow, 2013).
Norbert Elias the second writer in denial of death thesis expanded the writing by holding
responsible the palliative and hospice care to drive the perception of people for denying death
in modern society. Death was seen as taboo in modern world palliative and hospice care made
it more evident to people and clinician that they can have control over death. This made them
believe that death is controllable and people started to deny it. Gorer the third writer of the
thesis indicated that mourning rituals in early Victorian times were missing from the modern
world. He described how death was accepted and people mourned before but now death is not
accepted and people do not know how to mourn for dead. This may be because of reduced
religious belief and perceptions influenced due to media representation of death. Media usually
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represents death as violent and harsh and never shows the one that is natural making people
frightened of death and deny it (Hanusch, 2010).
CRITICISM OF DENIAL OF DEATH THESIS
Denial of death thesis has various aspects that do not fit in modern society and the social
aspect and can be altered with changing time. As the writers have put society to be a fixed
domain in the thesis irrespective of the changing face of society and this is not true and with
changing time the societal values changes that make the denial of death thesis false. It is seen
over decades that every era has its own mindset and level of accepting things and as the culture
and ethnicity changes the people becomes more practical and uses approaches or accepting
things more practically (Neimeyer, 2015). Many religious beliefs follow such rituals that dying
person and family of dying person undergoes spiritual purification and ceremonies that is
beneficial for them these beliefs make the person and his family more accepting towards death.
Blaming the denial of death on health care and doctors is also not a true phenomenon as
doctors and health care can only enhance life expectancy but are never able to control death.
Even the health and social care organizations are misinterpreted and held responsible for death
but in a true sense, these organizations are never responsible for the death of a person rather
only in case of negligence and misconduct. The thesis also mentioned that priest was present
before that could make a record of death apt and people accepting death due to it was more
evident but in modern times doctors calling of death and issuing death certificate are also a
replacement to that practice that makes record keeping for death exist in modern times even.
Rather a legislative framework applied to certify death has made it easy to prove the death of a
person even after decades that was missing previously and this show how modern society is not
completely a death-denying one (Kastenbaum, 2015). The other important factor that is missing
in the thesis is awareness for death that can be done by newspaper social media etc. in modern
times and this is required in the current era. The revival of death awareness is the theory that
supports this view that awareness of death by mass media and social media in modern times
have been more than in previous times. Walter’s three forms of death also described revivalist
stage because the older traditions of death are identified to be revitalized in modern times so
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after two concepts of death being stated by Walter that is traditional and modern the third set
was given the name revivalist death.
BEREAVEMENT AND MOURNING
Bereavement is the phase defined as a period of mourning and sadness that is associated after
a loss especially the death of a family member or loved ones. People in current times also avoid
talking about death as it indicated bereavement and mourning. It is seen that people who have
suffered the death of loved ones usually keep quiet and do not talk about it openly or accept it
openly with the impression of being negatively criticized by the society (Hockey et al, 2010).
Mourning and bereavement are explained through various stages in different theories. Parker
has given a stage theory of grief where the stages are defined as a shock, despair and recovery.
Another theorist Rando has given six stages of grief that are the stage of loss, stage to react to
it, recollection of relationship with dead, relinquish the memories, readjust and reinvest. In
these stages, Rando explained how a person after the loss of loved ones cope with life and
eventually gets away from mourning to lead a normal life again. On another hand Averil again
has givens stages of grief that is shock, despair and recovery. These stage theories explained
the pattern and cycle of grief and bereavement successfully but are unable to explain the
concept of death to a greater level (Irish, Lundquist and Nelsen, 2014).
Kubler Ross also presented the five-stage model of grief that is widely accepted for
understanding the experience of death as well as grief. The model is multidimensional that
explains the emotions a dying person experience and also the one that the other people
experience after his death during the bereavement phases (Jupp, 2016).
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CONCLUSION
Death is an inevitable subject and no one is immortal and even nothing can control death.
Medical sciences and advancements have proved to be beneficial in delaying the process of
death and increasing the life expectancy but yet it is not able to control or eradicate death. In
contemporary society, death is not talked about at any level as it is feared to such an extent.
The previous era was characterized as a better awareness of death among individuals and
better acceptance of death but as life is becoming longer the phenomenon of death has been
started to deny by human beings. Denial of death thesis concluded how death in modern
society is denied due to doctors and palliative care as well the criticism of denial of death thesis
has made it evident that some aspects of this theory are not true as society is changing and the
facts about society cannot be kept stagnant to overall period. Also, revivalist theory and others
presented better awareness of death in modern times than the previous era. Hence, it can be
concluded that no matter how much a human denies death yet it is fact of life and every
individual has to face it.
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REFERENCES
Bailey, L.W. and Yates, J., 2013. The near-death experience: A reader. Routledge.
Baudrillard, J., 2016. Symbolic exchange and death. Sage.
Bury, M., 2013. Health and illness in a changing society. Routledge.
Chapple, A., Ziebland, S. and Hawton, K., 2015. Taboo and the different death? Perceptions
of those bereaved by suicide or other traumatic death. Sociology of health & illness, 37(4),
pp.610-625.
Corr, C.A., Corr, D.M., and Doka, K.J., 2018. Death & dying, life & living. Cengage Learning.
Friedman, R. and James, J.W., 2008. The myth of the stages of dying, death and
grief. Skeptic (Altadena, CA), 14(2), pp.37-42.
Gilmore, H., Schafer, C., and Halcrow, S., 2013. Tapu and the invention of the "death taboo":
An analysis of the transformation of a Polynesian cultural concept. Journal of Social
Archaeology, 13(3), pp.331-349.
Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L., 2017. Awareness of dying. Routledge.
Hanusch, F. 2010 Representing death in the news: journalisam, media & mortality.
Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
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Hockey, J. et al. 2010 The matter of death: space, place & materiality. Basingstoke: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Irish, D.P., Lundquist, K.F. and Nelsen, V.J., 2014. Ethnic variations in dying, death and grief:
Diversity in universality. Taylor & Francis.
Jupp, P.C., 2016. Contemporary issues in the sociology of death, dying and disposal.
Springer.
Kastenbaum, R., 2015. Death, Society and Human Experience (1-download). Routledge.
Neimeyer, R.A., 2015. Death anxiety handbook: Research, instrumentation, and application.
Taylor & Francis
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