Navigating death talk in a changing society

It is good to talk. This expression has adorned countless appeals, advertisements, posters, podcasts and inspirational GIFs, all aiming to sell an idea, product, or service, build connections, boost confidence, raise campaign awareness or inspire changes in attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and understanding. The dictum seems inherently sensible and is borne out by other proverbial idioms that identify with the idea of communication making life easier, such as ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’.

For many years, policies and practices for improving the provision of palliative and end-of-life care have been predicated on the need to promote ‘death talk’ to and among a population that might otherwise have been (sometimes and often erroneously) considered unwilling to engage or feel prohibited from actively contributing to the debate or discussion (Wilson et al, 2022). In recent times, Marie Curie (2021) identified that, while people may convey the impression that they feel comfortable talking about death and dying, few actually do so in terms of formally planning end-of-life preferences and arrangements. This may be, in part, because people lack the knowledge of services or linguistic or interpersonal communication skills to have such conversations (Graham-Wisener et al, 2022).