A PERSPECTIVE ON THE CURRENT STATE OF DEATH EDUCATION

Abstract

The author offers some views on the current state of death education with focus on the sparing attention given the death education of health professionals and of grief counselors. There is need for improved integration of the knowledge accumulated in the study of death, dying, and bereavement into the basic curricula of the parent disciplines and professional schools. Facilitation of personal engagement with the issue of mortality is an important component of the educative process. Various assessment problems are outlined and some suggestions for improvements are offered. The death education needs of various groups, including school age children and older adults, are noted. The article contains a list of references, many not cited in the text, recommended for an extensive review of developments in death education.

Notes

¹By the American Psychological Foundation, 2001.

²The basis for his 1959 path breaking book, The Meaning of Death.

³Personal communication at the Conference on Death and Dying: Education, Counseling, and Care, December 1–3, 1976, Orlando, Florida.

⁴Feifel organized a symposium on “Death in Contemporary America” to the American Psychological Association in 1981 and presented the proceedings in a special issue of Death Education which he guest-edited in 1982, 6(2).

⁵Internet search engines provide thousands of links to training programs.

⁶And only a minority of primary and secondary school students are provided death education or suicide intervention/prevention, depriving too many of the potential benefit of these interventions.

⁷The considerable amount of “missing data” in several areas related to death education should be priorities for future research. Reliable estimates of death education occurring at the college level and at primary and secondary school levels would be useful for developing strategies for active promotion.