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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Attitudes to aging
— a comparison of obituaries in Canada and the UK | | Author(s) | Ruth E Hubbard, Eamonn M P Eeles, Sherri Fay |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 21, no 4, August 2009 |
| Pages | pp 787-792 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/ipg |
| Keywords | Dying ; Dementia ; Attitude ; Newspapers [publications] ; Comparison ; Canada ; United Kingdom. |
| Annotation | Populations worldwide are ageing and the overall prevalence of dementia at death is now 30%. Since the contemporary social impact of a disease is indicated by the frequency of its newspaper coverage and since obituary notices illuminate conceptions of death, the authors hypothesised that obituary notices placed by families would reflect societal attitudes to ageing and dementia. A critical discourse analysis of 799 obituaries in representative national and local newspapers in Canada and the UK found that chronological age, suggested donations in memory of the deceased, and donations to dementia charities were each included in significantly more obituaries in Canadian newspapers than in UK ones. Military service was explicit for significantly more men aged 80+ in Canada compared to the UK (41% versus 4%). Of the donations to medical charities, nearly half (117) were to cancer charities, and one-fifth (54) to heart and stroke foundations. In the UK, obituaries for those aged 70+ were more likely to recommend donations to children's charities (12), or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (8) than dementia charities (7). Donations to dementia charities were significantly more common in obituaries in Canada than in the UK. In both countries, donations to medical charities did not reflect disease prevalence or impact to the individual. Societal attitudes in the UK may be impacted by the fragmentation of ageing research and antipathy to geriatric medicine in the national medical press. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-090825244 A |
| Classmark | CX: EA: DP: UE:6H: 48: 7S: 8 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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