A study from the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF) has found that most of us would rather not think about death. Many with Irish parents or grandparents, who sometimes seem to think about nothing else, might disagree.
Regardless, the study, which examined media discourse around how Ireland is “talking about death”, has concluded that Irish media “talks about it constantly”.
The analysis looked at how dying and death have been portrayed in the national media over the past three years, but excluded violent and accidental deaths, suicide, deaths of children, inquests and obituaries.
Ultimately, 708 news items and associated images remained, according to the study, which argues that everyday realities of dying from illness or old age remain “largely invisible or framed through clinical, institutional, or grief-management lenses”.
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Media coverage of death is important for public policy, the study argues, “because if an issue is not on the public agenda, it may not be acted upon by the Government”.
Ireland’s rapidly changing “death culture” was evident from media coverage, the study found, noting the advent of rip.ie and digital memorialisation, alongside the phenomenon of death cafes, where people can “talk about life and death over tea and cake”.
The study also argues that the nation is positioned as having a “strong collective self-image as uniquely good at death”, citing the wake, communal mourning and ritual.
This is alongside media confronting the erosion of Catholic structures that long underpinned those practices.
“In essence, Irish death culture is losing one set of structures while assembling another,” it says.
[ How to ‘die well’ in today’s Ireland: It starts with living a good lifeOpens in new window ]
Perhaps the most important finding, the study says, is that “how we die is deeply unequal”.
“Media coverage consistently presents two contrasting models: the bad death – in a hospital corridor, in pain, alone, without adequate support, versus the good death – which occurs preferentially at home or in a hospice, pain-free and dignified, surrounded by family, with time to say goodbye,” the report says.
The study also concludes that while individual stories of grief appear as a personal and emotional experience, taken together, the full picture is different.
“Pandemic grief, bereavement leave policy, and disenfranchised grief collectively tell a story of grieving as an under-resourced public health issue that requires structural, not just personal, responses,” it says.
“What this study ultimately reveals is a media ecosystem that is doing serious and important work around death, but doing it unevenly, and often without recognising what it is doing.
“The coverage collectively constructs death and dying as both an Irish social and/or health crisis and a deeply human, navigable experience. The challenge now is to make that conversation more conscious, more inclusive, and more useful to the people who need it most.”
The report will be launched at a “national conversation on dying, death and bereavement” hosted by the IHF at Croke Park on Thursday.
Such a conversation is needed, the IHF said, particularly as Ireland’s “ageing and increasingly diverse population” is expected to place growing demands over the coming decades.
By 2046, the yearly number of deaths in Ireland is expected to rise by 40 per cent, it said, while the number of people requiring palliative care is anticipated to increase by 50 per cent.
The IHF argues that the impact of bereavement will consequently grow “substantially”.
“Ireland’s population is changing and so too are people’s experience of dying, death and bereavement,” said IHF chief executive Paula O’Reilly.
“This requires us to think differently about how we support people as they approach end of life and how we care for those who are grieving.”
Among the topics to be discussed on Thursday is what constitutes a “good death”.
