Citation
Eachus, P. (2013), "Internet review", Health Education, Vol. 113 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/HE-07-2013-0033
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Internet review
Article Type: Internet review From: Health Education, Volume 113, Issue 6
July 2013 Death
How do you know when a strawberry is dead? Does it die as soon as it is picked or does it live on for a few minutes, hours or even days? What would you look for as an indication of death in a strawberry? This was the topic of a recent radio science programme and, not surprisingly, they failed to reach any conclusion. Death has always had a fascination for human beings, which is why it features widely in the arts, humanities and literature but perhaps less so in the health education literature. Perhaps this is because death is an acknowledgement that “we got it wrong”, it highlights our inadequacies in a way that cannot be ignored. Yet, for the living, death has all sorts of repercussions, not least on their health and wellbeing. It is not for nothing that “Death of a Spouse” is the top item in the life events scale, a psychometric instrument that is used to predict the likelihood of ill-health caused by the cumulative effects of stressful life experiences. In this review we will look at web sites that discuss the issue of death with a view to helping the living cope, carry on and maintain their own health.
Open to hope
This web site is based in North America and was founded by a mother and daughter, both doctors, after their son/brother was killed in a car crash. The first section of the home page deals with different types of loss including death of a spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling, as well as co-workers and even pets. Each of these headings provides the user with links to a wide variety of resources including those that are text based but also radio and video clips. These resources are mainly taken from the developers own TV and radio shows. Users should be aware that although the text and video resources are easy to access, the links to the radio broadcasts are very small and can be easily missed.
Moving on, the next section deals with “Your Grief” and the first topic is the “Grief Process”. Users might be forgiven to expecting to find at least something substantial from this widely researched topic but this is not dealt with specifically, rather users are presented with dozens of links to many of the links that were previously available in the first section so this is rather disappointing.
Special topics covered in this web site include sections devoted to “Men”, “Military” and “Hospices”. All dealt with in the same way through the provision of links to the radio and TV shows, with a sprinkling of text articles.
There is a lot of substance to this web site and users will undoubtedly find something of interest. However, the organisation and presentation of this material needs more consideration if the web site is to fully meet its stated mission.
Death café
According to the web site the objective of death café is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”. Although we are here reviewing the web site, in effect a virtual death café, death cafés are not virtual, at death cafés “people come together in a relaxed and safe setting to discuss death, drink tea and eat delicious cake”.
The death café concept is based on the work of Swiss sociologist, Bernard Crettaz, but the real cafés were developed by Jon Underwood as recently as 2011. The first death café was held in Jon's basement but since then they have been held in the Royal Festival Hall, a yurt, in other people's houses and of course in real cafés.
As far as this web site is concerned the most useful information explains to users how to hold their own death café. Starting with a Blog that provides a whole host of links to death cafés around the world users can quickly find information on the concept of the death café, the principles on which they are founded and details of the people involved with the movement. A very detailed document that provides advice and guidance on running a death café is also provided for free download. This is an excellent handbook and covers all the necessary details on planning, running and evaluating your very own death café. This document even includes a minute-by-minute breakdown of activities that you might want to include in your death café.
Finally, to find out who else has been hosting death cafés, there is a link “Death Cafés in the News” that brings together news reports of death cafés from all over the world.
This is a concept that deserves to succeed and there are plans to move the café idea into the virtual world which would mean that people from many different parts of the world could congregate to share ideas (and cake) about this important topic.
Dying matters
In 2009, the National Council for Palliative Care set up the dying matters coalition and this now has over 30,000 members throughout the UK. The aim of the organisation, chaired by Professor Mayur Lakhani, who is a practising GP, is to promote the public awareness of death, dying and bereavement. The membership is wide and diverse including organisations from the NHS, voluntary sector, community organisations colleges and the funeral sector. Ultimately, the goal of dying matters is to have death accepted as a natural part of everybody's lifecycle, which may sound strange since it obviously is!
The three most important parts of this web site are “Find Me Help”, “Resources” and “Information”. The first provides users with a postcode-based search facility that returns details of care services that are local to the user. It works very effectively and returns details of charities and NHS services that are relevant in this context.
The “Resources” section is extremely well stocked and users will find video clips, leaflets, posters and much more. Most of this is freely available to individuals but there are also packs of information that would be more suitable to organisations and these can be purchased from the online shop. There are even lesson plans so teachers can introduce the topic of death and dying to their pupils.
How well have you considered the arrangements for your own death? Most of us probably have given it very little thought so the section on “Information” is very useful because it explains, in detail, how to plan for your death as well as the death of others. Here users will find advice on planning a funeral, writing a will, organ donation and much more. There is also a section that provides specific advice for professionals who are involved in death, dying and bereavement.
Finally, in the “Community” section users have access to a Blog, a Forum with various discussion themes, for example, how much should you pay for a coffin or what constitutes a “good death”! There are also relevant news items including details of upcoming events.
Dying matters is an excellent web site, well designed and with a raft of accessible content that will help people, hopefully before they actually need that help.
Sudden
The main concern with the previous web site, dying matters, was to get the public to accept death as a normal part of life that everyone will ultimately experience. While this is of course true, it is also the case that sometimes death is violent and horrific such as when someone dies in a road crash, or commits suicide, or dies in a major disaster, or through an accident. In these circumstances there is no time to prepare or say goodbye and for those impacted their lives will be changed forever. The Sudden web site exists to provide support to people who find themselves in this type of situation.
Sudden is supported by brake (www.brake.org.uk) the road safety charity because many sudden deaths are the result of road traffic accidents. The actual content of this web site is relatively limited and is divided into two main sections, one for suddenly bereaved people and the other for professionals involved with the care of these people. Clicking on the “Help for Suddenly Bereaved People” takes users to a web page that apparently has very little content. There are brief details of a book “Coping with Sudden Death”. This is a free publication but is has to be ordered via an e-mail address. It would be so much better if there was an online version of this book on the web site, or even the facility to download a PDF version. There is also a link to the Amy and Tom web site (www.amyandtom.org) that does provide an online book dealing with sudden death in the family, though this is aimed mainly at children. It is not clear if this lack of content is because the web site is new or whether there is a funding issue, but either way the content of this section does need to be enhanced.
The section of the web site for professionals is much better in terms of content and indeed much of this could be made available to lay users as well. Professionals can join a forum for the discussion of relevant topics, there is also a list of seminars and training that is available to professionals but it is the online guidance that provides most of the information on sudden death and it is this that lay users might want to access as well. Finally in this section there are research papers and reports, which are quite technical and therefore are more suited to the professionals.
The Sudden web site is an internet resource that is certainly required and with just a little more thought about the content provided this could be an excellent web site.
Peter Eachus
University of Salford, Manchester, UKE-mail: p.eachus@virginmedia.com