Shortly after I graduated with a masters degree in clinical psychology, we had a major earthquake in Adapazari, Turkey, a town close enough to my home-city of Istanbul that resulted in a death toll of 35,000, and many more that were wounded and/or traumatized. I was part of a group of private practitioners, and overnight our office space expanded to include hospitals and tent cities.
Changing the Face of Death: The positive death movement brings light to what has been taboo
America has been described as a society that is at the same time death-obsessed and death-denying. Mainstream media, in its efforts to capture and hold our attention, focuses on the sensational and feeds us endless stories and images of people being killed and we can’t seem to help but devour them all in a sort of dark obsession. At the same time, most people have a very hard time talking with depth about the idea of their own death and the topic is often treated as taboo.
