Traumatised by dead people.

Tapey
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Traumatised by dead people.

There was a story in the news today about a group of school children who were caught with "very powerful liquor" on a school bus. Most of them were under 18. The teacher took them to the police station because no one took responsibility.  Long story short a police officer took 9 of the students to the mortuary. Inside the pupils were shown many cadavers and were forced to watch a post-mortem. Amongst the bodies they were shown

Quote:

"The body of an infant who had been burned to death, a man who had been stabbed to death, a person who had been savaged by a dog and someone who was killed in a car accident were shown to the children."

After this they were forced to clean the mortuary. All of this was done as punishment.

Needless to say the parents were furious and attempted to lay charges of child abuse but the prosecutors have refused saying it doesn't quality.

 

Now this got me thinking, why is seeing a dead body this traumatising thing to - what seems like - most people? I had a rather pointless conversation in the comments which I shall post here

Quote:

Me - God we have such an unhealthy relationship with death. Showing people dead bodies is something we should be doing. That really shouldn't be considered a punishment. Watching a post mortem should be considered an educational experience, not child abuse.

Phiwe - it's educational if you are a med student! Everyone else has nothing to gain from observing postmortems and looking at dead bodies, and not everyone does either.

Me- Phiwe it is still educational, regardless of use for the information it is still educational. I can learn about geography while being an engineer and learning geography would still be educational despite me not having a use for that geography.

Phiwe - It's not the same, Geography does not tend to traumatise people

Me - That just proves we have an unhealthy relationship with death. The only why we are ever going to improve this is by being comfortable with death, part of that is seeing dead people. Obviously it should be done in a respectful way, but really what I want is people brought up in a way so seeing this kind of thing is not a traumatic experience.

Phiwe - I profoundly disagree!! However, you are more than welcome to take your children to mortuaries

Now I might have over stated my position a little with this being the internet and every thing. Seeing a dead infant that has been burnt to death probably should shock us but I am no expert on such things, although I would say even something like this shouldn't traumatise someone. But am I being irrational in thinking this really isn't that bad and we just have an incredibly unhealthy relationship with death? Would showing people dead bodies help as part of a larger effort to have a healthier relationship with death? Or am I just being totally irrational in both seeing the need for a healthier relationship with death and in how one might approach it? Actually showing someone a body would be like one of last things that I would do, more I was just thinking more communication about death to children, but actually showing people a body I think should be part of it.

 

TLDR - Is being traumatised by seeing dead people irrational? Should the violence of the death make a differance? Do we have an unhealthy relationship with death and if so would showing people dead people be a good way in a much larger scheme to have a more healthy relationship with death.

 

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When I was in high school in

When I was in high school in the US, it was common practice to show the students in the driver's education class a slide show of 8x10 (inch) glossy photos of automobile accidents taken by the investigating police officers.  With blood.  Lots of blood.  The bodies - if shown - were discretely tucked in body bags usually being loaded in an ambulance to be transported to the morgue.

Did the photos upset me?  You bet and most of the rest of the class as well - even the guys got a little green.  Especially, I noticed, the loudest ones who were trying to cover up their discomfort by making supposedly funny remarks.  Did it make a difference in my driving habits?  I believe so.  I had/have no wish to wind up with a steering column through my middle (not as possible now with the newer cars).  Or going through a windshield.  Or any other gruesomeness.  Did it change my drinking habits when younger?  Not a heck of a lot.  Though I did tend to have repeat dates with guys who got more cautious when drunk rather than more reckless.

If an afternoon at the morgue prevents them from ending up statistics, I don't see the problem with it.  There was one early this morning local time --

http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=131265634945703800 wrote:

One person was killed and four others were injured early Saturday morning in an accident that sent a Chevy Suburban tumbling off Highway 217 near the Sunset Highway.

Beaverton police said the person who died in the accident was a male passenger in the Suburban. Four other people in the vehicle, two men and two women, were taken to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland for treatment of what police called moderate injuries.

Their names and medical conditions have not been released.

Police said the accident happened at about 2:53 a.m. Aug. 6 when the Suburban apparently was trying to negotiate the turn from northbound Highway 217 onto the Sunset Highway westbound. Witnesses said the vehicle careened over the highway’s jersey barrier and landed on the grassy median below.

Police believe speed and possibly alcohol may have been factors in the crash.

Highway 217 northbound at Barnes Road westbound was blocked for several hours as the Washington County Crash Analysis Reconstruction Team investigated the accident.

 

I would think the parents of these young people would be grateful, not angry.  I know I would have been.

We also got to watch films about junkies.  Usually heroin addicts.  I have no idea if the actors were actual junkies, recovering junkies, or actors with a lot of makeup.  What got me was real needles being poked into real arms.  I have a needle phobia.  Needless to say, I am not a junkie, have never been a junkie, will never willingly poke anything vaguely resembling a needle into my own arm.  I get faint and nauseous when a nurse does it.

 

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 I agree with you Tapey.

 I agree with you Tapey. And it isn't only human death that people make a big deal over, but animals as well. I remember Gordan Ramsay caught some flack a few years ago when he killed a chicken in front of some teenagers. Death is a part of life, and trying to keep kids away from it does nothing to protect them. 

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Yah, people make way too big a deal about death.

 

It did not used to be that way though. A couple of centuries ago, before people moved from farms into cities, death was an accepted part of living. Grandma lived at home with the rest of the family and you would bring her meals to her bed on a tray. When she would not take meals anymore, then you kind of knew what was up.

 

Either that or your older brother would die at age twenty in some accident. OSHA would not have approved of what was going on but it was part of life. People die. It sucks but you move on somehow.

 

Today, people go to the hospital and never come back. So we are removed from the natural process.

 

Really though, if we are going to expose kids to this, why not take them to a forensic anthropology lab?

 

They are reputed to smell like soup. The reason being that the point of interest is the actual skeleton and they have gigantic steam tables where they put the bodies in almost boiling water for a few days to get all the flesh to fall off.

 

Either that or bring them to the morgue for the scary bit but do that at 11:00 in the morning. Then they can have lunch with the people who work there.

 

Really, death sucks and there is no way around that. Another forum I was on at the time (which had a no religion rule), well when George Carlin died, I posted a very secular eulogy. Not a problem there because I never touched on the matter of religion. I think that George would have been pleased. I don't remember what I said fully but the general sentiment was the his passing made the world a slightly poorer place for his loss.

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Seeing these people who died

Seeing these people who died violently probably was terrifying, but at their age these kids surely watched just as bad things on countless horror movies. And I don't know what does it have to do with alcohol. Showing them a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous would be more educational. This is just a punishment.

Taking all the kids to a work in mortuary seems to me like an overreaction. I vividly remember how we drank some rum at the back of the class, in 9th grade and the teacher didn't notice or care. But this is a country where the government tried to forbid alcohol completely at the era of prohibition and some anti-alcoholic hysteria can be expected.

As for the topic, we are probably instinctively scared of death, makes evolutionary sense. Specially a violent death. Put a few millenia of culture on top of it, and you have an irrational view of death. Today in developed nations it's better (or simplier, funerals are expensive) but otherwise various ethnicities make a damn big circus out of it. 

I think it doesn't matter if you show dead bodies or not, there's usually not much to see. But don't show trappings, flowers, golden handles on ebony coffins, brass band, honors and luxurious tombs. These are useless, expensive trinkets, if Americans wouldn't want them, they could afford a whole free public medical care. 
This glorified and dreaded dead body is basically a biohazard waste, full accumulated diseases, toxins, medical drugs and parasites. And this thing we put into the soil, where ground waters flow and where our crops grow. Did anyone ever think of hygiene? Perhaps those cremated, or even better, aquamated. 

If people would believe that the body is shed as an empty husk for the purpose of reincarnation, they could easier treat it for what it is, a dead meat. Achieving a similar perspective through materialism is much more diffcult for most of people. 

 

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Luminon wrote:Seeing these

Luminon wrote:

Seeing these people who died violently probably was terrifying, but at their age these kids surely watched just as bad things on countless horror movies. And I don't know what does it have to do with alcohol. Showing them a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous would be more educational. This is just a punishment.

Do you really think an AA meeting would have any effect on a teenager?

 

I am not saying a big shock tactic is the best way to get a message across to a kid. That part is irrelevant, I do believe that taking those kids to the mortuary seems like a bad way to get a message across, but I do believe that it shouldn't been seen in a negative light, showing them dead bodies was not a bad thing.

 

The best way to get them drink responsibly is to have parents and friends who drink responsibly, to have good role models. I used to drink and smoke but I have quit both. It wasn't some shock tactic of diseased lungs or a fatal crash that got me to quit. One day I just realized I waste a lot of time and money on stupid shit which doesn't help me in any way. I can and do enjoy myself with out alcohol and smokes so why waste money on them.

On a side note, I have found a lot of people have a negative reaction to someone stopping drinking/smoking.

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 Fear of death might be

 Fear of death might be rational because death interrupts whatever plans you made which makes at least some of the things you do futile and pointless, and that's bad. It's rational to fear things that are bad. 

 Fear can also be beneficial. It causes people to be cautious and show compassion.

 

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Just may thoughts on the

Just may thoughts on the matter, I see where you are coming from but I disagree. For all practical purposes it makes not differance but in theory death shouldn't be what you fear. I shall attempt to explain badly.

 

Gauche wrote:

 Fear of death might be rational because death interrupts whatever plans you made which makes at least some of the things you do futile and pointless, and that's bad. It's rational to fear things that are bad. 

It might be rational but that does not mean it is good. I would say that is some weak logic though. Dieing making things you have done futile and pointless isn't necessarily bad. It is certainly not bad for you once you are dead, I mean you are dead, you don't exist, there can be no bad for something that doesn't exist. Even from the point of view of while you are still alive it is still irrational. If it is not futile and pointless until you die, it doesn't become bad until you die, if something cannot be bad for a non existant thing then it cannot be bad even once you are dead, at no point was that futile and pointless thing that you did become bad for you, except maybe in that period where you know you are going to die, but I suspect you have larger concerns then.

Not that this matters because of the next part

 

  

 
Gauche wrote:
Fear can also be beneficial. It causes people to be cautious and show compassion.

 

I won't deny that, although it would obviously have to fall into a certain range of fear. I would suggest there are better motives than fear though. Empathy for example is a far better reason to show compassion than fear.

Not that I am saying fear is a bad thing, It keeps us safe, death is an irrational fear to my eyes though, and its those irrational fears that need to go. A violent painful death however is not an irrational fear. Fear of your actions being futile and pointless in the end I will grant that it is rational for this bit, but a fear of death is irrational. You might not want to die because it will lead to futile and pointless actions but it is not the death part that you should have a problem with then. It is the actions being Futile and pointless not the death. You might not want the death because of something else but that doesn't make it rational to fear death just because it is connected to something you fear.

That would be like fearing hot air balloons because you are scared of falling to your death. Sure you don't want to get in the hot air balloon because of your fear of falling to your death but that doesn't mean being scared of the hot air balloon itself rational.

 

 

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
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All animals are equal.


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 As far as taking the kids

 As far as taking the kids without their parents' consent, I believe they were very wrong.  I'm also not sure that it was a particularly appropriate form of punishment.  However, I agree with you that it should not be all that traumatizing.  Death is something everyone should contemplate once in a while, especially since it's GOING to happen eventually.  Ignoring it only increases anxiety and ignorance.  

That being said, I personally have only seen one dead person in my entire life and he was in a casket.  It was a shock, and it was unpleasant, but it didn't scar me for life or anything.  It kind of makes me appreciate my own family more, imagining that someday I might have to look at a body that is no longer my loved one, and that someone will have to look at what used to be me.  Don't mean to be morbid, here... the point is that for me it was a beneficial experience.


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 I don't really understand

 I don't really understand what you're saying. The whole point of the argument that fear of death is irrational is that death doesn't really do harm to the individual. Making your projects pointless though is a harm caused by death that happens at a time people can experience a bad event. Fearing your plans will become pointless for any reason is rational.  

 To say that if I fear rain because I planned a picnic, my fear of a ruined picnic is rational but my fear of rain is irrational is splitting hairs a little thin.

 

Edit: Also if you think fear of death is irrational then why do you agree with showing kids corpses to scare them?  

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Tapey wrote:Do you really

Tapey wrote:

Do you really think an AA meeting would have any effect on a teenager?

I am not saying a big shock tactic is the best way to get a message across to a kid. That part is irrelevant, I do believe that taking those kids to the mortuary seems like a bad way to get a message across, but I do believe that it shouldn't been seen in a negative light, showing them dead bodies was not a bad thing.

I'm not sure, depends how bad it gets there. I should rather have said show them a sobering-up station at work, but I don't know if you have these in USA. It is a Czech invention, you know. 

Anyway, even that seems futile. I went through high school on tales of my classmates getting drunk, puking casually for convenience, passing out in ditches and not remembering how they got home. I heard tales of pub fights, of gypsies, skinheads, anarchists, punkers and unfortunate bystanders. I grew up hearing about women or children of alcoholic men. Both my brothers have girlfriends from alcoholic families. 

Should I be surprised that the opinions of some people around get a little radical? What about a dying station for alcoholics, where they lie on a rack with bucket below them, sustaing drunkedness by cheap infusion of industrial alcohol and saline? What more could they want from life? They would not mind being watched by terrified sights of children on educational tours. Perhaps that would be a sight terrible enough to show them that alcohol might be not so wonderful after all. 

At the very least, it should be legally allowed for doctors to NOT give drunk children an blood-clearing infusion when they get to hospital. Otherwise they wake up feeling wonderful, no hangover or anything and will do it again.

 

Tapey wrote:

The best way to get them drink responsibly is to have parents and friends who drink responsibly, to have good role models. I used to drink and smoke but I have quit both. It wasn't some shock tactic of diseased lungs or a fatal crash that got me to quit. One day I just realized I waste a lot of time and money on stupid shit which doesn't help me in any way. I can and do enjoy myself with out alcohol and smokes so why waste money on them.

On a side note, I have found a lot of people have a negative reaction to someone stopping drinking/smoking.

Yes, that is the best way, but the most diffcult one, more like a goal in itself. The bad message is, I don't see any way to bring that about, short of deep transformation of all aspects of our society, because its very basics are against our good. The good message is, we're long overdue for the overhaul and probably in a generation we wouldn't recognize this world. 

I used to smoke and quit for many reasons. I can understand why people take it negatively, it's like betraying a brotherhood. Smoking gave me the only sure social niche I ever had. Such things bring people together. It's extremely pleasant and relaxing too, although it's rather the illusion of being momentarily freed from craving. 
So I gave it up (and never drank much) in favor of other kind of joys and woes (mysticism), which is unfortunately not a social activity. Don't worry, I'm getting more normal every year, though there's still a long way to go.
 

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Luminon wrote:

I'm not sure, depends how bad it gets there. I should rather have said show them a sobering-up station at work, but I don't know if you have these in USA. It is a Czech invention, you know.

 

 

No, we don't have those. What we do have are programs called “Scared Straight” in various places. What happens is that people who are looking at doing serious time in prison can trade some of the sentence for day long sessions where they get to unload on juvenile delinquents. The theory being that if the kids find out what is in their future if they don't get their act together, then they will try to do better in the future.

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Luminon wrote:

I'm not sure, depends how bad it gets there. I should rather have said show them a sobering-up station at work, but I don't know if you have these in USA. It is a Czech invention, you know.

 

 

No, we don't have those. What we do have are programs called “Scared Straight” in various places. What happens is that people who are looking at doing serious time in prison can trade some of the sentence for day long sessions where they get to unload on juvenile delinquents. The theory being that if the kids find out what is in their future if they don't get their act together, then they will try to do better in the future.

 

 

I think what Luminon is talking about is what we commonly refer to as the "drunk tank".  That is a cell, Luminon, in the police station where the drunks are put until they sober up.

 

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p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }No, we don't have those. What we do have are programs called “Scared Straight” in various places. What happens is that people who are looking at doing serious time in prison can trade some of the sentence for day long sessions where they get to unload on juvenile delinquents. The theory being that if the kids find out what is in their future if they don't get their act together, then they will try to do better in the future.

What age are the kids let in? In Slovakia or Hungary there is one vajda (gypsy king) who publically addressed the problem of Roma criminality and proposed radical but logical and just solutions. He suggested that children would be shown the insides of youth prison at the age of 10-12, so they won't develop any romantic notion about getting busted. He also suggested to change school laws, so that children who hit a teacher will have the whole family's social welfare taken away.

 

cj wrote:
 I think what Luminon is talking about is what we commonly refer to as the "drunk tank".  That is a cell, Luminon, in the police station where the drunks are put until they sober up.

Yes, SUS is similar. I don't know much about it, except it's a small medical facility, includes a cold water hose showering, the drunk must clean up after himself and must pay for the stay. 

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Dead bodies never bothered

Dead bodies never bothered me in my formative years. Maybe if I saw a dead friend or two, that would be different. But how so?

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Assuming this ocurred in America...

Whether or not the punishment is inappropriate is entirely irrelevant to whether or not police misconduct ocurred.  Police are part of the executive branch, not part of the judicial branch.  They catch and hold the people who commit crimes, but they are not supposed to be determining the punishment for those crimes.

Also, working with the deceased brings about several specialized safety concerns.  I seriously doubt these kids had the proper training for handling chemicals or dealing with potential biohazards.  Were they at least allowed to sober up before the cleaning?  Showing photos is one thing, but can you imagine the trouble the police would be in if one of these kids got a chemical burn or an infection or something?

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Luminon wrote:


 

cj wrote:
 I think what Luminon is talking about is what we commonly refer to as the "drunk tank".  That is a cell, Luminon, in the police station where the drunks are put until they sober up.

Yes, SUS is similar. I don't know much about it, except it's a small medical facility, includes a cold water hose showering, the drunk must clean up after himself and must pay for the stay.


 

I have seen them in documentaries. Hence the reason why I said that we don't have them.


 

Realistically, every community has something. Just not a specific facility for drunks. Normally, we use the emergency room for that and the police station is only used for communities which are so far from a hospital that it would not be practical for an ambulance to be routed for the job.


 

Actually, we do have a small number of detoxification centers but those are so limited that you normally can't get into one unless you are such a problem drunk that you are serially wasting emergency room resources.

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I think trying to hide death

I think trying to hide death would cause more harm than showing it. Kids, on average, believe they are invincible. There's no harm in poking a hole in the psyche of the average youngster. However, in this day and age, it's also largely irrelevant what happens in school in this regard. The internet is rife with scenes of exceptional gore, and the chances of a kid making it through high school never hearing about rotton.com or 4chan or a thousand other sites where such can be found with ease is highly unlikely.

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I simply view death as part

I simply view death as part of life. My daughter though only 4 is learning this as well. In the past year she has had to deal with 2 deaths one much closer to her than the other. My uncle died in January and our 15 year old cat died a bit more than a month ago. For me both hurt yes but as I said I accept death as part of life and was able to accept and go on easier than much of my family (dealing with my uncle). As for the cat again both my wife and I were hurt for the day he had to put to sleep but we accepted it and moved on. My daughter did not really know my uncle so that one didn't effect her and she did see his body but really didn't understand it. When it came to our cat we worried how she would take that since he had always been there and she loved him. She spent about a day asking lots of questions about where Milo was and what happened to him. We explained things to her. The following Monday I was telling our babysitter about the cat and she asked Nora how she was doing and Nora said it was sad that Milo was gone and she missed him but he was still with her and she pointed at her heart and said right here all the time. The thing I was most proud of was when the babysitter, who is christian, said Milo was happy now he was with god and Nora said No he is in the back yard helping the grass and the flowers grow. She told the babysitter that Milo was now part of the earth again and would always be around. I couldn't help but feel a little proud of that because we didn't really tell her that last part she came up with that (I'll just thank Disney and "The Lion King" which she watches about once a week)

She seems to be accepting that death is a part of life and even thou the person or animal is gone in a physical sense they are still in our hearts and minds. In accepting that and the fact that death is simply the end result to life she is on her way to having what I think is a healthy relationship with death.

I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.

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Great story Zeephus.

 

Here is my avatar from a couple of other forums. He has been gone for a few years now (made it to 18). Every time I see it, I have to think that even though his physical location is my mother in law's garden, there is some part of the relationship that will exist as long as I do.

 

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