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Experiencing bereavement in childhood can cause profound changes to developmental trajectories. This paper aims to evaluate the feasibility of implementing a public health intervention in schools to encourage pupils aged 12-15 years to independently explore ideas of death, dying, loss and end of life care in a structured and creative format.

A co-produced storytelling intervention was implemented in an independent school in Norwich, UK. Pupils wrote up to 1,000 words in response to the title, “I Wish We’d Spoken Earlier”. Their participation was voluntary and extra-curricular. Stakeholder feedback was used in addition to the submissions as a measure of acceptability, appropriateness, adoption and feasibility.

In total, 24 entries were submitted. Pupils demonstrated their ability to engage thoughtfully and creatively with the subject matter. Feasibility for the storytelling intervention was demonstrated. Importantly, the intervention also prompted family conversations around preferences and wishes for end of life care.

To determine whether the intervention has psychological and social benefits will require further study.

Educational settings can be considered as anchor institutions to support a public health approach to end of life care.

The positive response from all stakeholders in delivering and supporting the intervention indicates that schools are a community asset that could be further empowered to support children and families affected by death, dying and loss.

Death is a certainty for all of us. For many old people in Western society age, illness and social death are inextricably linked. It is predicted that the number of people in the world who are over 60 years old will double by 2050. This brings fundamental changes to societal demographics. Many older people live in good health well into old age, but there remains a significant number for whom growing old includes the development of complex physical and social needs, requiring both health and social care. This poses a particular challenge to health and social care providers. This paper seeks to provide insights into the ways in which older people in contemporary society make sense of death and dying and makes a case for improvements in end‐of‐life care for this population.

People with learning disabilities often have to cope with death, dying and bereavement without being fully informed of the circumstances and sometimes without being told that death is imminent or indeed has occurred. This paper explores the issues associated with death and dying from the perspective of people with learning disabilities, and considers proactive ways of working in this sensitive area.

Life, in many ways, is simply grief waiting to happen. It is the emotions of death – simultaneously something ordinary and universal as well as extraordinary and unique – that we try to capture and make sense of with the notion of ‘grief’. The so-called ‘corona pandemic’ that has spread throughout the world during the past 2–3 years is in many ways a crisis of global proportions that, at its very core, is caused by and concerned with the fear of death and dying from a deadly disease. So far, six million people have died in the corona pandemic. The ways we grieve and mourn our dead are indicative and informative of the society/culture in which we live and the values, norms and ideas that prevail within it. This chapter deals with the emotion and practice of grief as it is particularly related to experiences of death and dying in a contemporary Western corona-ridden society. I explore challenges relating to the display of emotions, ritual practice and ceremonial closure – as well as the paradoxical way in which the corona pandemic has inaugurated a new great disappearing act of death and grief at a time when death and grief have been paramount experiences for many affected people. Today, we know more about grief than at any other time in human history, but the question remains whether we have become any better at accepting it, dealing with it and living with it.

This contribution is an investigation into the palpable connection of extreme metal music and concepts of death, dying and mortality. Like other dark subcultures, metal has an intense infatuation with the macabre; many of its subcultures seek to uncover meaning through musical exploration into varying dark themes that emerge when thinking about death and what lies beyond the bounds of existence. From the abrasive and animalistic blood lust of death metal to the melancholic textures of black metal and the sonic void evoked in doom metal, extreme metal is a catalyst through which fans of the macabre can explore many perceptions and conceptions of corporeal fragility; the consuming pain of life, of death, and of knowing; and the existential notion of the ungraspable abyss. This chapter explores these varying conceptualisations of death in extreme metal culture, their sonic representations and their cathartic consolation: delving into the psychoanalytic reasoning and embodied sound of death.

The Euro-centric nature of dark tourism research is limiting the perspective and restricting the scope of contemporary theory. Hence, this paper aims to explore how dark tourism consumption differs in a society apart from the Anglo/Eurosphere. This is done by testing Stone and Sharpley’s (2008) thanatological framework in Mexico, a country whose residents are renown for having a unique perspective on death, to assess whether Mexican dark tourism consumers undergo a similar, or different, thanatological experience to that proposed in the framework.

The study adopts a qualitative approach in the form of a case study. The opinions of Mexican dark tourism consumers were gained by using the technique of semi-structured interviewing in four separate dark tourism sites within Mexico City, with coding serving as the form of analysis.

The findings show that due to the non-existence of an absent/present death paradox in Mexican society, the research participants experienced a thanatological process that contrasts with those from Western societies, which indicates that the thanatological framework is unsuitable in the context of Mexican dark tourism. At the same time, the study contests the common perception that Mexicans have a jovial familiarity with death, and demonstrates that in this case the thanatological process confirmed an acceptance of death, rather than any kind of intimacy.

The research is valuable in that it is a response to recent calls for research in geographical locations not previously considered in a dark tourism/thanatology context.

Service users very often interpret and respond to their experiences of death, dying and bereavement through a religious or spiritual lens. However, recent trends in religion and belief have influenced how professionals respond to indicators such as faith. Since the post-war years in Britain, and due to the transfer of services from church to state, as well as the change in the religious landscape, language has largely secularized. When people start addressing religion and belief again, they lack the appropriate literacy to do so, this is termed religious literacy by Dinham (2015). The purpose of this paper is to explore how professionals in end of life (EOL) care respond to service users’ religious and spiritual indicators, through the lens of religious literacy.

The paper draws from an ethnographic study undertaken across hospices in England, UK. In this study, healthcare professionals (HCPs) were observed for one calendar year.

Results show that lack of religious literacy on the part of HCPs may lead to subtle and unintentional microaggression. Three types of indications of microinvalidation have been noted: verbal, non-verbal and environmental.

This paper innovates in offering a first-hand phenomenological interpretation of observations in the field. The research data capture visually the impact of lack of religious literacy, an achievement which adds to the dialogue about service user rights in EOL care.

Pokémon has proven to be one of the most enduring and successful gaming franchises. Over the last two decades, Pokémon has produced dozens of games, multiple animated shows, and several movies. In this time, video games have found a new footing when it comes to approaching death. Titles like A Mortician’s Tale (2017) by Laundry Bear Games have opened up digital gaming as a place, where death can be explored with serious thought and a new emotional depth. A dichotomy has emerged between games that take death seriously and ones that lower death to a mere game mechanic. This chapter looks to bridge that growing divide and explore the pop phenomenon that is Pokémon through the same critical lens that has been used to examine games like A Mortician’s Tale. Ultimately, the Pokémon franchise emerges as capable of thoughtful and provocative conversation about death and dying.