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Educare

Educare

ABRIL 2006 N° 4 Volumen 4

Two generations facing death

Section: LEARNING TO TEACH

Authors

Esther Ferrer Bargues, Aranzazu de la Torre Alapont, Noelia Lizama López, Inmaculada Pradillas Contreras, Nuria Tent Ramis

Position

Alumnas de la EUE "La Fe" de Valencia.

Contact address

C/ Barón de Campo Olivar, 1. 46110 Godella (Valencia).

Abstract

Death remains a taboo subject for a large part of today´s society. There is a lack of knowledge and a lack of awareness, both on the part of the professionals as well as the affected individuals. Mortality can have several causes: cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, obesity, aging, traffic accidents, etc. However, the perception that death can get us at any time in our lives is still far away from our mind.
Knowledge surrounding death, such as the documentation that is needed when a relative dies, the different ceremonies held, the different ways of dying, grieving, etc. is vast and on many occasions we do not dare dealing with the subject for fear of it affecting ourselves or our loved ones.
We, as future health professionals, have conducted a transversal study to analyse the knowledge that young and older people alike in the area of Campanar, Valencia, have on death during this academic year 2005-2006.
To this end, we have selected young people within an age range of 15 to 25 years and older subjects within an age range of 65 to 75 years to see the differences in thought from one generation to another.
After analysing the different answers, the results indicate that 58% of the respondents prefer not to think about how they feel, what they believe and what they fear in relation to the last stage of life. Likewise, it is worth pointing out that 51.5% of the elderly subjects interviewed are not afraid of death, whereas among younger individuals the value reaches 27.8%.
The main conclusion reached is that the general population does not dedicate time to think about their own death.

Keywords:

death; elderly stage of life; youthpain and agony

Versión en Español

Título:

Dos generaciones frente a la muerte