Catch 22
Although the subject of this blog is unlikely to lead to the creation of a great American novel, our work promoting a charter on end-of-life care for the North East Strategic Health Authority has resulted in a no-win situation, or catch 22.
Since the beginning of October we have been raising the profile of A Good Death charter and public consultation around death and dying. A Good Death sets out to get north easterners talking about death and dying in the hope that they will begin planning for end of life.
There are many reasons why this is a good idea – it gets people thinking and talking about issues including organ donation, wills, where they would like to die and what kind of care they would like to receive. A recent survey shows that many people may not be receiving the kind of service they want, because they aren’t talking about it. For instance, six out of ten people say they would like to die in their own homes but the vast majority of people die in hospital.
The survey also showed that the North East is the UK’s least comfortable region when it comes to discussing death and dying and almost two thirds haven’t discussed their end of life plans – giving some idea of the scale of the resistance we have faced in highlighting the issue in the media.
Death and dying are taboo subjects, topics of conversation generally frowned upon by polite society. The only way we can break the taboo is by making death and dying a socially acceptable discussion topic.
As we all know, the media has a huge role to play in making issues socially acceptable or unacceptable. The media is the A1 route to getting topics up for debate, helping people grasp issues, changing opinions and encouraging people to realise that it’s OK to talk about such matters.
Although the regional and city papers have been supportive both regional TV stations won’t touch the issue because it’s not appropriate subject matter for peak time viewing.
This is where the spirit of Joseph Heller is invoked. Death and dying need to be aired publically to make them socially acceptable. However, TV will not talk about the subjects until they are first accepted by society. Eat your heart out Yossarian.
Obviously it’s not the end of the world that the TV stations have objected on the grounds of not wishing to offend public sensibilities by talking about death (even though they are not afraid of beaming car crashes, murders and Mike Ashleigh’s plans to rename St James’ Park for profit directly into our homes during teatime. There are a great deal of other channels we are using to get the message out. However, the TV stations’ standpoint seems greatly at odds with a media largely unabashed to reveal all in ever greater detail. Maybe death really is the one last real taboo. Help us break it by logging onto www.agooddeath.co.uk