Week 1 Flashcards
How is death unfamiliar to us? How many deaths were institutional deaths 70 years ago? How do rural settings and urban differ when it comes to death?
Seventy years ago, deaths in institutional settings accounted for 50% of deaths; now is 80%.
But we are estranged from death, largely. People brought up in rural settings had more exposure to the birth and death cycle, compared to people who grew up in the city
What is Excess Mortality?
Excess mortality - diff in the num of death expected in a normal condition vs a dangerous condition (covid-19) deaths above what would be normally anticipated — is a signal to public health officials that something concerning is happening and needs to be addressed
How do these factors affect familiarity with death? Demographics? Professionals? Life-extending technologies?
Demographics: Increasing life expectancy and lower mortality rates. People also don’t live together in multi-generation homes in the ways that they used to.
Delegating to professionals. Don’t get to experience our relatives death first hand.
Displacement of death from the home. People used to prepare the body at home and buried the dead themselves. Now, people tend to be spectators rather than participants, with professionals doing the work.
Life-extending technologies. Leads people to have “exaggerated optimism.” Medicine tends to distance family from the dying. Death can be indefinitely extended vs. a normal part of life.
b/c of these 4 factors, death tends to be familiar
How does mass media shape our attitudes toward death?
The spectacular obscures the ordinary – Sudden, violent deaths are more interesting to us than dying from cancer.
Odds of death from a heart attack are 1 in 5. Death from lightning is 1 in 81,701 (more likely shown in media)
Media coverage seeks to capture the experience of tragedy at the expense of the victims.
How is death represented as entertainment in media?
Thrillers /Slasher/Horror films: Show things to be feared
Dying is something that happens to us, rather than something that everyone experiences
Tv rarely enhance our understand w death when it does not depict the death of heart attack, cancer, etc and how they deal w it
How does the news play a part in the public knowable of death? How accessible are death reports?
Wartime casualties being accessible knowledge.
Mass shootings are reported as “mass” once there are more than 4 victims
- excluded native victims in news reports
website available for the Homicide in Toronto
What is the Mean World Syndrome according to George Gerbner? What does it lead to?
According to George Gerber, mass media (especially television) depicts death in a structure of violence that conveys the world is dangerous, insecure and full of mistrust.
This leads to:
- Dread of dying
- Diminished vitality
- Anxiety and fear that is out of proportion with reality
- Suspicions of other people and their actions
- “Everything is dangerous”
What is the study of Thanatology? According to the text?
Study of facts or events of death and the social and psychological mechanisms for dealing with death.
Mainstream thanatology focuses on improving the care of people faced with life-threatening illness or bereavement.
Text: thanatology can be many different things : philosophical, sociological anthropological, clinical, educational
What is death anxiety? Who is it more prevalent in? Gender? Race?
Death anxiety, very common: death attitudes characterized by fear, threat, unease, discomfort, and similar negative emotional reactions.
People who can accept the idea that they will be dead someday and that death is natural tend to have less death anxiety.
(high death anxiety v. less death anxiety)Higher among women, Black people (vs. White people), youth/middle aged, the less religious vs more religious.
What are the Eight types of death fears?
Dependency
Pain in dying process
Indignity in dying process (not being able to cope with the physical process)
Isolation, separation, and rejection that can be part of dying process
The leaving of loved ones
Concerns with the afterlife (fear of nothingness, worry about divine judgment)
Finality of death (end of one’s identity, end of all of one’s social relationships)
The fate of one’s body (decomposition, burial, not being treated with respect)
What is Terror Management Theory? Effects of 9/11?
Suggests people adhere to cultural worldviews and beliefs to suppress death and mortality related thoughts. These are “death denying cultural belief systems.”
People who have less terror around death tend to be more religious. — Why might that be? Religion helps people to respond to situations in which they come face to face with the limits of human control and power, especially in the face of death.
After 9/11 attacks, the highest level of church attendance since 1950 was observed in North America.
What are the four main points to Terror Management Theory according to Ernest Becker? Bonus point form prof?
- The world is a terrifying place
- Basic motivation for human behavior is to deny the terror of death and control our anxiety around it
- Because it is so overwhelming, we conspire to keep the terror unconscious
- Our effects to destroy evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world, which typically takes the form of violence
**Becker says that we see any perceived threat and blow it up into a life and death struggle against what we see as the ultimate evil and he proposes that this is the kind of violence, you see that characterize as much of history. — so, because people are afraid of death, They try to stamp out anything that could cause death and destroy what they see as evil that that scares them and in trying to “destroy evil” than more evil is brought into the world
How does Humor act as a defense mechanism against death?
Defuses anxiety
Raises consciousness about a taboo topic and gives us a way to talk about it
Provides an opportunity to rise above sadness
A release from pain and helps people feel more in control in an unchangeable situation
Helps bind people together and become closer in the face of death
How is systematic racism play a role in mortality? What about COVID-19 and poverty?
racialized people in Canada have higher poverty rates, which is associated with greater mortality
For COVID-19, increased risk of infection and mortality is associated with overcrowded housing conditions and working in occupations that expose people more to the virus
how does Racism affect health?
racism in Canada and the U.S. is associated with greater levels of self-reported stress and worse physical health
