To wonder why the cause of people’s death is so taboo

[Nursejackie1]

There are so many announcements of deaths on social media these days, many of young people often accompanied by photos and memories which are obviously heartbreaking. I just wonder why the death is usually announced without any explanation. And seems so inappropriate to ask what happened. Is it so taboo? I just find that there are so many posts like this and there seems to be such a silence around what happened like it’s disrespectful to give any insight into why. I hope I am not going to offend anyone here I just find it sad to be so invited emotionally into a lost life and human nature means you are going to purely internally speculate on what has happened to the person who has sadly died.

I’ve definitely noticed this with anyone who dies young. At this point I just assume if they don’t mention a tragic illness or accident, the person either committed suicide or overdosed. I’ve seen this play out enough times where I do have knowledge of the full situation that the pattern has just become too strong to ignore .

Where I live if you tell someone about a death they ask , I've had this after a couple of family tragedies and it's very difficult but sometimes it's good to talk about it . I wouldn't post online about how the deaths occurred but in the death notices on local radio they will say suddenly for unexpected , after an illness if it's that and so on

I do think it's cultural as well. The cultures my parents are from (two different ones) are both pretty obsessed with talking about death. I've lived in England for a long time and people don't really discuss death like that or have big funerals etc. Neither is wrong I think, just different norms.

If it’s a ‘well known’ person on tv they tend to hint eg ‘police not treating it as suspicious’ usually means suicide

No, this simply means there is no "foul play" suspected. They could have died in an accident or of an unpublicised health condition. It does NOT have to mean suicide. It can do, obviously, but there are lots of other instances where it's long term health issues.

N Irish here and I think most people are a bit more comfortable speaking about death. There’s a whole culture around death, with wakes, big funerals and other rituals that families go through when they lose someone.

Certainly there is almost an epidemic of suicide amongst our young men in some communities. Families are usually very open about the struggles that their loved ones have been through in an attempt to encourage others in the same position to get help. There’s no shame from anyone.

Sometimes it is a cultural taboo, sometimes people just don't think it's important to list it in obituaries or other public announcements with everything else on their mind, sometimes the cause of death is not known, and sometimes it's complicated.

Even when something is listed on the death certificate, cause of death isn't always neat. I have loved ones who have one cause is listed, but they also had multiple other issues. The 'cause' would really be more like a death of a thousand cuts - it was one thing after another after another that piled up into something that is recorded like heart failure, but everyone close knows it was a lot more than that. Whether we discuss that with others depends on the person or our mood. It can feel dishonest and a wrong against the person who died to give the listed cause of death when we know there was a lot more involved. It sometimes feels better to not list something that we can't fully find the words to explain.

I've also had people I know who died young and I've never really felt a need for further details. Maybe it's cultural, maybe it's because I dealt with a lot of illness and deaths fairly young and thought about it a lot as a child in a way that there were always things I wouldn't understand & that's normal and okay. As a teenager, I lost others my age to black ice, pregnancy-related complications, SDS, and there was a couple that I never learned directly, though I heard different ideas from others based on what was going on in their lives. I never felt the latter did much good as all it seemed to do was fuel chatter and gossip rather than anything that might help prevent another one.

While I can see passing curiosity, that doesn't give anyone more rights to information. I think in many places there should be more talking about death generally, there are benefits to doing so, but to an individual grieving person, that's a personal choice if they want to do so and a desire to make a public announcement shouldn't come with any obligations to give more information than they want to give.

@TerribleCustomerCervix

N Irish here and I think most people are a bit more comfortable speaking about death. There’s a whole culture around death, with wakes, big funerals and other rituals that families go through when they lose someone.

Certainly there is almost an epidemic of suicide amongst our young men in some communities. Families are usually very open about the struggles that their loved ones have been through in an attempt to encourage others in the same position to get help. There’s no shame from anyone.

That does make sense to me. It's not from the point of view of being coy or closeted about the person's death, it's the nosey parkers, intrusive, gossipy and, once they know, they lose interest. It is those sort of people who should be ashamed.

My friend is from Northern Ireland too and when she lost her mum I saw the process from your description, TerribleCustomerCervix, it's very comforting and I know my friend was really happy to share in this with friends/family and acquaintances. It's absolutely a different world from the gossipy nosiness that I'm more familiar with.

The idea of being open to encourage others to get help and feel no shame is a great and positive outcome.

Believe me, you wouldn't want to know the cause of my dd's death.

This thread is vile

Condolences to all the bereaved on here.

My DF died last year with a combination of cancer, dementia and Covid. I guess there was no mystery involved, certainly no one asked me for details.

My oldest friend also died very suddenly aged 53. I was incredibly shocked and needed some details to make any sense of it. Her DH also needed to tell me what had happened as a way of processing his shock and grief.

What was terribly sad was that nine months later, on her birthday I checked her Facebook page to leave a message for her family and saw that upwards of 20-30 people had left, ‘have a fabulous day,’ type messages and clearly didn’t even know she’d died.

It’s a subject that’s hard to get right and easy to get wrong.

Can't see what the hell it's got to do with anyone else how a person died. All anyone needs to know is that the person is dead.

Is it just out of curiosity that you feel you should be told the details OP? Because otherwise I can't see why you feel you should be given that information.

It's the same with illness. If someone tells you that they're unwell, do you expect to be given all the ins and outs of their illness?

I was a bit thrown after my dsis’s death by the number of casual acquaintances who asked me bluntly if it was cancer. No it wasn’t. But did it really matter to them?

Yes I've just experienced this earlier. Young woman, outpouring of sadness for her but no cause of death. It's normal to be curious about a young death as it goes against the natural order of things.

Having said that, all the people who asked about dsis were otherwise kind, thoughtful friends, so I guess it was probably a way of showing support.

I person I know died but they didn’t say on social media how.

It was a accidental drug overdose, leaving behind 5 children.

Maybe that’s why some people don’t say.

@ferneytorro

It’s wanting to distance yourself from the death though isn’t it so if someone dies who is my age and they smoked, knowing that makes me less worried I will drop dead as I don’t smoke. It’s a reaction to being scared of death, you want a reason that they were different to you otherwise you’ve got to confront your own mortality.

I think this is very true, although I still think that makes it quite insensitive.

We want to convince ourselves we're alright and the person who died made a mistake we aren't stupid enough to repeat :(

I agree there is an element of processing the death by hearing/talking about how it happened, but you can do that in a sensitive way without barging in on the closer, potentially traumatised as well as grieving relatives.

I think it usually means suicide or addiction. A very old friend of mine died suddenly and it was announced on fb, I hadn't seen or spoken to him personally in years and it didn't feel right to ask on fb but it later came out that it was suicide. I think if it's an announcement of some sort, it's not necessarily mentioned but if you were told in person, you would naturally ask what happened.

My 20 year old son took his own life 5 months ago.

I am not at all bothered who knows how he died and I haven't had anyone tiptoe around me or talk in hushed tones.

No-one knew anything was wrong, but he obviously had undiagnosed depression and for some reason couldn't ask anyone for help.

I don't feel guilty or ashamed about how he died, just broken hearted.

I think we should all be much more open about mental health problems.

I knew a lad who died by suicide. His religious middle class popular family covered it up, wouldn't mention it. And his friends too. They appeared ashamed imo.

There definitely is taboo especially around suicide.

@sausage I'm so sorry to hear that.
I hadn't read your post until just now.

There definitely is not any shame.

@SausageCrush I am deeply sorry for your loss. It is very important that everyone is open about MH issues and the stigma is taken away so that people think nothing of approaching others for help. The families who hush it up and try to stop their children from seeking help because of the "stigma" only contribute to the problem.

A social media announcement is just that. It's not a full obituary, it's to let others know that a person has died. We're constantly told to protect personal information online, so I don't know why you'd think anyone would want to, or should, go into a lot of medical detail about a death?

Even when someone older passes away in their sleep people are always going to write something along those lines rather than 'well he was 81, and his kidneys weren't great, but he also developed an irregular heart beat, and may have had cancer but we weren't sure, he'd be on some new tablets for his heart...'etc. etc.

Death certificates are public documents that can be obtained from the GRO six months after the death - www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/faq.asp (and maybe earlier from a local office). So concealing the cause of death just seems weird to me.

I personally completely understand when people don’t announce the cause. I was very open on my social media when my dad was sadly dying so people knew, but he passed suddenly in the end and I was happy to explain what happened. I think in general there’s a whole taboo around death. A few people were uncomfortable when I was talking about how peaceful my dad looked in the chapel of rest. I’m a very open person so I’d share but I also don’t object if others choose to keep that information private. If you’re close enough to the person you tend to know anyway. I can’t believe people actually message bereaved family members asking questions too. So nosey

@SausageCrush - I’m so sorry to read your post.

It depends on the setting- if you are posting on social media about an unexpected death of a young person it's natural for friends to wonder about the cause. If you don't want to discuss it why are you posting on social media about it? The BMJ Obituaries section usually gives details of the cause of death. The obituaries is climbing magazines are a bit predictable (and put me off rock climbing).