DO NOT USE THESE MOVIES
The Bucket List
The Notebook
My Sister’s Keeper
A Walk to Remember
Up
Stepmom
Steel Magnolias
PS I Love You
The Fault in Our Stars
My Girl
Me Before You
Coco
The Lovely Bones
Ghost
Seven Pounds
Death at a Funeral
Watch at least one television program or movie that has a theme related to death. Describe the (a) general theme of the program, (b) an overview of the characters, (c) detailed information regarding why you chose this movie/program and (d) any other pertinent information.
Describe how death was portrayed in the movie. How does this relate to the information presented in the textbook? Discuss at least TWO DIFFERENT MAJOR theories/concepts discussed in chapter 15.
Answer the following: (1) What are your views about death and dying, and (2) how they relate to the information provided in the textbook? (3)Have your feelings about death and dying changed as a result of reading Chapter 15? If so, (4) explain how. If not, explain why.
APA style is not required for this assignment but you must have a cover and a reference page. MLA is acceptable.
Paper should be no less than 1200 words.
If you pick a TV program you must choose a specific episode and write about that episode. (you may include background information from other episodes)
Cho 15 final summary
Today, we have three major pathways to death: (1) People die suddenly, without warning; (2) they steadily decline after being diagnosed with a fatal disease; or, (3) most often, they battle an ultimately fatal, chronic condition for a prolonged time. Before modern medicine, people died quickly and everyone had hands-on experience with death. Then, during most of the twentieth century, medical science relocated dying to hospitals, and people avoided talking or thinking about death.
During the past half century, Western attitudes changed. Doctors now openly discuss potentially fatal diagnoses, and society has health-care alternatives devoted to easing people’s passage to death. We also urge everyone to discuss their end-of-life preferences, although mentioning death is still forbidden in some cultural groups.
The Dying Person
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her stage theory of dying, proposed that people pass through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance when learning they have a fatal disease. However, we cannot take this landmark theory as the final truth. Patients often shy away from discussing death. They may not want doctors to be totally honest about their prognosis. Dying people feel many different emotions — especially hope. Rather than emotionally approaching death in “stages,” people may experience a state called middle knowledge, both knowing and not fully comprehending their fate. Even when they accept death, terminally ill people still have life goals.
Religious sources showcase the defining qualities of good deaths: It’s best to die at peace after a long life, surrounded by our loved ones. Specifically, people want to die relatively free of pain and anxiety, feel in control of how they die, and end their lives feeling close to their attachment figures. Believing that we have fulfilled our purpose in living and appreciating that death is part of the universal human cycle of life is also important in accepting death.
Our culture has clear conceptions about typical mourning. After an initial period spent absorbed with their loss, we expect people to recover emotionally after about a year. Mourners who still show intense symptoms after this time are diagnosed with a controversial mental health condition called persistent complex bereavement-related disorder, or chronic grief.
However, chronic grief may be typical in the face of cataclysmic events like COVID-19 and especially when parents face the death of a child. In this traumatic situation, it helps to openly discuss dying (if that child understands what is happening) and to keep the child “alive” in one’s thoughts. Transforming these deaths into a redemption sequence allows grieving parents to restore a sense of life as predictable and fair. Marriages can become closer as couples seek comfort from the one person who can understand their pain: their spouse.
The Health-Care System
A classic study of dying trajectoriesshowed that, since dying doesn’t proceed according to a “schedule” — but medical personnel assume it does — the way hospitals manage death leaves much to be desired. Because traditional medicine is focused on cure-at-all-costs, the pressure to use futile heroic measures also impairs humane care at the end of life. Remedies include: (1) offering end-of-life care instruction to health-care personnel; (2) establishing palliative care services; and (3) relocating dying from hospitals to home-based hospices.
Home hospices in the United States offer backup services that allow families to let their loved ones spend their final months dying naturally, at home. Family caregivers can expect different trajectories to death depending on the person’s illness. They confront scary issues relating to pain control. It may be hard for doctors and families to label patients as dying; also, minorities may have unique hospice concerns. Home deaths may not be the best choice when attachment-related issues, such as not wanting to burden loved ones, matter most to people facing a fatal disease.
The Dying Person: Taking Control of How We Die
Advance directives provide information about whether to use heroic measures when individuals can no longer make their treatment wishes known. These documents include the living will and durable power of attorney for health care, filled out by the individual while healthy, and Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) and Do Not Hospitalize (DNH) orders, filled out by surrogates when the person is mentally impaired. The best advance directive is the durable power of attorney, in which a person gives a specific family member decision-making power to determine end-of life care.
With active euthanasia and physician-assisted death, physicians move beyond passive euthanasia(withdrawing treatments) to actively help fatally ill people who want to end their lives. Paramount among the objections to legalizing active euthanasia is the idea that we may open the door to killing people who don’t really want to die.
A related issue is age-based rationing of care, whether to hold off on using expensive death-defying technologies with people who are old-old. At this moment, age-based rationing of care is poised to move center-stage in Western nations, as the massive baby boom cohort enters their old-old years. The timeless message of this chapter — and the book — is that love (or, in developmental science terminology, our attachments) is at the core of human life.
Key Terms
active euthanasia
advance directive
age-based rationing of care
Do Not Hospitalize (DNH) order
Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order
durable power of attorney for health care
dying trajectory
end-of-life care instruction
home hospice
Kübler-Ross’s stage theory of dying
living will
middle knowledge
palliative care service
passive euthanasia
persistent complex bereavement-related disorder (chronic grief)
physician-assisted death
Answers ToTying It All Together Quizzes
Setting the Context
(b)
slowly and erratically; an age-related chronic disease
Ché, because today we openly discuss death and are making efforts to promote dignified dying
The Dying Person
(c)
many different emotions; hope
(b)
Your goal is to restore the person’s sense of meaning in life, ideally by helping that individual transform the loss into a redemption sequence; also, you might want to get the person to lean on a spouse for comfort, although partners don’t need to openly discuss their mutual pain.
The Health-Care System
We cannot predict when people die, even though hospitals are structured as if we could. Medicine is focused on preserving life, so doctors are under pressure to persist with futile treatments, rather than focusing on providing the best comfort care. The pressure to focus on patients’ physical needs makes it difficult to give dying patients the emotional attention they deserve.
(b)
(d)
Here’s what you might say to Feema: Would you feel comfortable burdening your family 24/7 with your care or having them manage the health crises that would occur? How would you feel about having loved ones see you naked and incontinent — would you want that to be their last memory of you? Wouldn’t it be better to be in a place where trained professionals could competently manage your physical pain?
The Dying Person: Taking Control of How We Die
(b)
Finneas’s case: We are free to make decisions about how to live our lives, so it doesn’t make logical sense that we can’t decide when our lives should end. Plus, it’s cruel to torture fatally ill people, forcing them to suffer fruitless, unwanted pain when we can easily provide a merciful death. Latoya’s argument: I’m worried that greedy relatives might pressure ill people into deciding to die “for the good of the family” (that is, to save the family money). I believe that legalizing physician-assisted death leaves the door open to governments deciding to kill people when they think the quality of their life is not good. Furthermore, only God can take a life!
Here your answers may vary in interesting ways. Enjoy the discussion!
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