An alliance of over 40 organisations is encouraging Scots to be more open about death, dying and bereavement.
The group say that avoiding thinking and talking about death can mean people don't die where they want to, the bereaved find themselves isolated and grieving families face legal battles because loved ones haven’t left wills.
Now the group, known as Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, is launching a campaign to encourage Scots to be more open about death.
The move comes after research found that most people haven’t talked to their family and friends about the kind of care their loved ones would want at the end of their life (58%) including where they would like to die (60%).
This is despite the same survey finding that 61% of people were scared of dying in hospital and 60% saying that if people felt more comfortable talking about death and dying, they would be less likely to die alone.
Chair of Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, Kate Lennon, said: “Death is inevitable for all of us but the problems and stresses we create by the difficulty we have as a society to acknowledge this are not.
“Avoiding thinking and talking about death can mean that people don’t die where they want to, families are left fighting legal battles because of a lack of wills, and the people living with bereavement or serious illness are isolated because no-one knows what to say.
“Some people believe it’s morbid to think and talk about death but it’s not. It’s a sensible way to deal with something that is inevitable for all of us.
“The medical and social care professions also need to get better at talking about death because they play a key role in ensuring people die well.”
The campaign is building on Scottish Government report Living and Dying Well 2008, that looked at how death was dealt with in Scotland.
The launch in Edinburgh was attended by Scotland’s poet laureate Liz Lochead who spoke of her personal experiences and read a poem about death and grief, while a video the highlighting the reluctance of Scots to talk about death was also shown.
One couple who understand the importance of talking about death is Scott and Llana McNie, who organised their toddler daughter’s funeral before she died.
The parents lost their three-year-old daughter Sienna to brain cancer in April, three months after they were told she couldn’t be cured.
Her parents say the reluctance among medical professionals to talk about Sienna’s death meant they almost didn’t get the chance to bring her home to die.
Scott added: “We found the doctors didn’t want to talk about palliative care options for Sienna. No one asked us where we wanted her to die.
“If we hadn’t been so willing to talk about Sienna’s death she would have spent her final weeks in a hospice rather than with her family and that would not have been right for us as a family.
“We had to accept she was going to die to make sure she had the best possible time while she was with us.
“We also wanted to give her the best funeral we could arrange, complete with a pink coffin in a pink carriage pulled by white horses and 100 pink balloons.
“To organise that took planning and we wanted to do it when we were still in the right frame of mind to do it.
“Death is a fact of life and when it’s a child it is very, very sad, but not talking about it can only make the situation worse.”
For more information about Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, visit www.goodlifedeathgrief.org.uk.
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