Social Organisation of Death

Question 1

Social death vs biological death?

Answer 1

Social death now occurs before biological death, as the structure of our social customs has been lost

Question 2

How do people view death now?

Answer 2

privatised and have separated it from life

Question 3

what is the ‘medicalisation of life’ thesis?

Answer 3

The involvement of social processes in a biomedical setting

Question 4

what is iatrogenesis?

Answer 4

Institutional focus on intervention and treatment has, until the recent past, too often blinded the medical profession to attending to the needs of the dying patient.

Question 5

What are the 5 points of a good death?

Answer 5

1. Awareness of dying: A personal and social process of greater openness about the prognosis of an illness where it known that there is a high probability of death.
2. Personal preparations and social adjustments: The settling of ‘emotional accounts’.
3. Public preparations: sorting out wills, putting practical affairs in order.
4. The relinquishing, where appropriate of formal work roles. Too often it is automatically assumed that dying individuals are beyond the age of retirement. This is not the case with AIDS and forms of CHD and Cancer.
5. A Good death involves formal and informal farewells.

Question 6

What are new developments?

Answer 6

Hospices and palliative care teams, making death a social, emotional and personal process