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Death & Denial
No one wants to talk about death, grief, loss or incapacitation. So we don’t. The statistics are awful.
- Most people say that making sure their family is not burdened by tough decisions is “extremely important,” yet 56% have not communicated their end-of-life wishes
- 70% of people say they prefer to die at home, but only 30% get that wish
- While 80% of people say that if seriously ill, they would want to talk to their doctor about end-of-life care, only 7% report having had an end-of-life conversation with their doctor
- 82% of people say it’s important to put their wishes in writing, but only 23% have actually done it.
Some inroads are being made to combat denial.
Family Caregiving Begins at Home
A new combatant in the war against denial is a public engagement campaign called, The Conversation Project. The project is a gift to family caregiving and is aimed at helping people talk about their wishes for End of Life Care. Supported by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the interactive site provides discussion questions and stories from those who have successfully made their wishes known.
Conversations need to take place at home first. The Conversation Project is a place to start. The goal is to get families talking to each other about their end of life preferences.
Co-founder and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ellen Goodman makes the point that there are “good deaths’ and “bad deaths”. The difference between those two is often “the conversation”. It is vital to know what our loved ones want at the end of their lives and also how survivors deal with that death. “What we really need is to change the cultural norm from not talking about it to talking about it.”
More than 60,000 people have visited the site and thousands have downloaded the free conversation starter kit.
A good way to start is to complete this sentence.:
“What matters to me at the end of my life is _____.”
See more at: http://theconversationproject.org
