Notes #3

Investigating the Concept of Death in Adults Who are Mentally Handicapped

There are only few information about what could be the adults’ perspective of death and even fewer was known on mentally handicapped adults due to the belief that an individual’s concept of death became clear and firm at early adolescence and remains constant all throughout. Though it appears from recent researches that mentally handicapped adults may be a good springboard of research on concept of death for they have rich and differing views about death resulted from their varied dreams about their deceased loved ones and being hesitant to talk about them thinking that it would bother them from their peaceful rest, little research has been done due to lack of interest. The notion that talking about mental handicap and death as forbidden, if not offensive, topics is probably the cause of such lack of interest to conduct research on these topics. Furthermore, biased pre-judgments about the views of death from mentally handicapped such as that they may not be reliable also hinders any research about them. Therefore, collecting data about these adults’ attitudes, understanding and expectations on dying people – death, will help us to enhance our knowledge and conception about mentally handicapped adults(McEvoy, 1989).

Even with less enthusiasm from the majority, McEvoy(1989) found out that mentally handicapped adults, despite the fact that they have a logical understanding of the effect of death, there still exist a large population of them that have a little understanding on aging and on cycle of life which includes death as end result of these processes, especially if they are to be related to themselves.

Source:

McEvoy, J. (1989). Investigating the Concept of Death in Adults Who are Mentally Handicapped. The British Journal of Subnormality, 15, 115-121. Retrieved from http://contents.bjdd.net/oldPDFs/69_115to121.pdf

Link from insidiousdeath(common blog): http://insidiousdeath.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/notes-4/