So Far and So Close: The Challenge of Death
In: Death, Dying, Culture: An Interdisciplinary InterrogationSearch for other papers by Abílio Oliveira in
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Birth and death awaken in us enormous curiosity and apprehension. To know that one day we'll die contributes to death being feared, hidden, silenced or ignored. We may try to escape or push it away, but death remains (uncomfortably) close by. Most likely, dying takes place away from family at hospital, where, despite the scientific advances and good health care, fear of death still reigns. We associate death with images of funerals, pilgrimages, worships, tombs, wills or mourning. Its representations are anchored in knowledge, culture, religion, ideology and person concepts. We investigated the representations of death among future health professionals (medical and nursing students) who try to avoid the death of others in a public context (hospital); and we investigated those who question life through death (biology students) in a population of approximately 300 participants. In a first study, we determined the dimensions of thoughts, feelings and images about death, then analysed them according to the course and sex. Subsequently, we conducted an experiment focused on the influence of the social context of death (with short films showing the death of someone in private or in a hospital surrounded by family or by health professionals) and on the way death is perceived, considering two experimental conditions and a monitoring condition (without film). All participants answered a questionnaire. We found a strong similarity in representations of death between women and nursing students as they evidenced emotional involvement, closeness to the other and a practical/ritualistic sense; and also between the representations of men and future doctors, who showed more emotional distancing and resistance to death, as if death were controllable. Particularly in the private context, death evokes a strong sense of malaise. By contrast, in the control condition, death is it is viewed with detachment, as if it were deferrable and impersonal.