Resources & Links
- Death & Dying: American Psychological AssociationDeath and dying can be stressful for dying people, their loved ones and caregivers. Psychologists can help. They can assess mood, mental functioning, and pain; treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems; provide end-of-life counseling to the dying and their families; and advocate for good medical care.
- Death and Dying in the United States: Stanford School of MedicineModern medicine has not only prolonged living but has also prolonged dying. Recent advances in biomedicine have converted grave illnesses like cancer into chronic illnesses. About 2 million Americans will die this year. Less than 10% of this population will experience a sudden or relatively rapid death due to cardiac diseases, trauma etc. Most will be diagnosed and live and endure life with a chronic illness for a prolonged period of time before transitioning into death.
Research & Reference
- Death: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on death. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
- Death and Dying: Opposing ViewpointsAn Opposing Viewpoints landing page on death and dying. This page includes links to academic journals, viewpoint essays, newspaper articles, videos, statistics, and more.
- Death Care Services in the U.S.The dossier presents a range of statistics and facts on death care services in the United States. The dossier provides a market overview and focuses on data of the major players in the market, as well as services performed and locations.
- Death in the United States - Statistics & FactsApproximately 2.84 million people in the United States lost their lives in 2018. The most common causes of death in the U.S. are heart disease and cancer, accounting for a combined 44 percent of all deaths.
Streaming Media
- Death Makes Life Possible: Transforming the Fear of Death Into an Inspiration for LivingDEATH MAKES LIFE POSSIBLE follows cultural anthropologist and scientist Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D., as she explores the mysteries of life and death from a variety of perspectives and world traditions. Sparked by her own near death experience as a teenager, Schlitz has been delving into the nature of consciousness and death for the past three decades.
Perspectives
The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America
Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver--cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying. Neumann struggled to put her life back in order and found herself haunted by a question: Was her father's death a good death? The way we talk about dying and the way we actually die are two very different things, she discovered, and many of us are shielded from what death actually looks like. To gain a better understanding, Neumann became a hospice volunteer and set out to discover what a good death is today. She attended conferences, academic lectures, and grief sessions in church basements. She went to Montana to talk with the attorney who successfully argued for the legalization of aid in dying, and to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to listen to "pro-life" groups who believe the removal of feeding tubes from some patients is tantamount to murder. Above all, she listened to the stories of those who were close to death. What Neumann found is that death in contemporary America is much more complicated than we think. Medical technologies and increased life expectancies have changed the very definition of medical death. And although death is our common fate, it is also a divisive issue that we all experience differently. What constitutes a good death is unique to each of us, depending on our age, race, economic status, culture, and beliefs. What's more, differing concepts of choice, autonomy, and consent make death a contested landscape, governed by social, medical, legal, and religious systems. In these pages, Neumann brings us intimate portraits of the nurses, patients, bishops, bioethicists, and activists who are shaping the way we die. The Good Death presents a fearless examination of how we approach death, and how those of us close to dying loved ones live in death's wake.
How We Die
Attempting to demythologize the process of dying, Nuland explores how we shall die, each of us in a way that will be unique. Through particular stories of dying--of patients, and of his own family--he examines the seven most common roads to death: old age, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, accidents, heart disease, and strokes, revealing the facets of death's multiplicity. "It's impossible to read How We Die without realizing how earnestly we have avoided this most unavoidable of subjects, how we have protected ourselves by building a cultural wall of myths and lies. I don't know of any writer or scientist who has shown us the face of death as clearly, honestly and compassionately as Sherwin Nuland does here."--James Gleick From the Trade Paperback edition.
Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death
In this long-awaited book of inspiring and practical teachings, Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax offers the fruits of her many years of work with dying people. Inspired by traditional Buddhist teachings, her work is a source of wisdom for all those who are charged with a dying person's care, who are facing their own death, or who are wishing to explore and contemplate the transformative power of the dying process. Halifax offers lessons from dying people and caregivers, as well as guided meditations to help readers contemplate death without fear, develop a commitment to helping others, and transform suffering and resistance into courage. She says, "Why wait until we are actualy dying to explore what it may mean to die with awareness?" A world-renowned pioneer in care of the dying, Joan Halifax founded the Project on Being with Dying, which helps dying people to face death with courage and trains professional and family caregivers in compassionate and ethical end-of-life care.