Mental health and end-of-life care infrastructure in Western Canada and the US is hindered by a cultural tendency to avoid discussions around death and human mortality.
The sustained impact of devastating pandemics and war through generations has conditioned our culture to perceive death as a premature and traumatic robbing of the soul.
Centuries later—despite the average life expectancy in Canada being 83.8 years for women and 79.4 years for men as of 2021—the social infrastructure of our mortality-avoidant tendencies still remains and has frankly overstayed its welcome.
In Canada and the US, the beauty industry’s fixation on anti-aging and the artificial practice of embalming—a process which is only regularly performed in Canada and the US—reflect a culture of discomfort and denial surrounding the natural mortality of its people.
This avoidance has detrimental effects on how resiliently its people can mentally process grief when inevitably confronted with death—which includes accepting the reality of the loss and maintaining an enduring connection to the deceased while embarking on the rest of one’s own life, according to Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning. Even healthcare workers are better equipped to deliver palliative care when they acknowledge their own mortality.
This overt concealment of aging and death stands in stark contrast to many other cultures which acknowledge them as a natural aspect of life and integrate these values into their communities.
Major national public days dedicated to spending time with deceased loved ones and ancestors, like Día de los Muertos in Latin culture, Qingming in traditional Chinese culture, and Pitru Paksha in Hindu culture, are visibly absent in Western culture.
These are celebratory days of ritualistic food offerings and reflection. They embrace biological death as a natural continuation of life by allowing ancestral spirits to live on through those who survive them.
Although Remembrance Day and Memorial Day exist in the West, their ceremonies only include the remembrance of former military service people. Maintaining the stigma surrounding our collective mortality means we miss out on benefits like reduced isolation and stronger community bonds.
In the West, death is distanced and sanitized. It often happens in hospitals or hospices in the care of medical personnel rather than at home, which reduces public awareness of the shortcomings of end-of-life care.
When I think of portrayals of death in Western media—be it as a bloodthirsty clown in a horror movie or as a disease—it’s almost always something to be escaped or vanquished. If a major death does occur, it typically signals the end of the movie.
Consequently, it’s unsurprising how little attention is brought to chronically underfunded and understaffed nursing homes, which struggle to provide adequate care and personal freedom to their residents.
Many of us will reach that stage eventually. Unless Western society can accept universal mortality, it’ll be woefully unprepared to accommodate the inevitable debilitation of its citizens. As any good engineer would tell you, the first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge the root of its existence.
Bo Fei is a second-year Health Sciences student and a member of The Journal’s QTBIPOC Advisory Board.
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