Death and Dying Sociology

Brian de Vries, P. S. (1993). The understanding of death and dying in a life span perspective. The Gerontologist, vol 33. no .3. 366-372.

This brings the concept of dying and death to the reader. The purpose of this is to offer a contribution of understanding death among the age range.

Over centuries, humans are living for longer and the majority are dying older, understanding death and dying is a part of the life course due to the process of marking the end of human life. Therefore, studies examine the way in which society discusses the concepts of dying and death and how we respond to illness or premature death and depart in general. We face death, deal with the loss of a loved one's throughout our lives. We are a nation of ignoring the last stages of the life cycle making it seem unimaginable, while trying to prolong death and ageing without discomfort despite this, many chose to believe an afterlife or rebirth to feel at ease about the experience. While some choose to peruse life and plan for the aftermath many of us would like to ignore the end of life and only confront by death. we should notice that individuals understanding of death is different from their opinions of their own death. The journal is a review of not only death but how accepting people are, an experiment was conducted where, Fifty-four men and women from across the adult life span wrote two-page essays about death and dying, they were instructed to write their interpretation of death and dying through their experiences either a lose this could feature thoughts, emotions, grief, closeness to the person and one's own arrangements.

The journal firstly introduces how older people speak about dying more regularly although death appears less frightening for them (Kalish, 1976; Wass, 1977), they are more aware and readiness about the subject, opposites to the older generation are young people because your life has only truly began at 18 so death isn't spoken about seem distant and know fewer people who have died (e.g., Kalish & Reynolds, 1977), the topic then changes to "mid-life crisis" this is explained that you have come to the realisation that you are getting old and knowing that time is running out generally when you hit 40 -50. The material then moves on to people's anxieties about death, most people are not scared of dying, it's the matter of how they will die this is followed by work of Dattel & Neimeyer, 1990; Neimeyer & Moore, 1989 with the use of the Threat Index and a companion measure, the Death Attitude Repertory Test (DART), this was used to determine death attitudes and to seeing if there was a clear definition of death and dying among women and men all ages, the participants were split into age groups titled young 20-39, middle 40-59 and late adult hood 60 and above. The volunteer's had been requested, after finishing a Guided Autobiography workshop at the University of Southern California between 1976 and 1988, which reviewed various parts of the life course. The researchers give them a question to answer basically how they read the following question "The History of My Experiences with Death and/or My Ideas about Death", how the person decided to answer the question was scored differently which included topics which were; to themselves, other, or was discussed as an assumption, these was used for analysis and scored according to how they answered the question; Death was scored when the focus of a paragraph was bereavement, grief, effects on life and seeing the deceased. Dying was scored when the writer had included the focus of a paragraph the interpretation of death, circumstances that will cause the death, preparing for when somebody dies because of illness, dealing without the person you love and organising a will, funerals. Results proved that there was no indicative gender difference throughout the results also revealed was that writers spoke about others experiences and hardly mention themself; the highest percentage was the young age 20- 39 a belief in an afterlife is high in this