Words describing feelings about death: A comparison of sentiment for self and others and changes over time

Understanding public attitudes towards death is needed to inform health policies to foster community death awareness and preparedness. Linguistic sentiment analysis of how people describe their feelings about death can add to knowledge gained from traditional self-reports. This study provided the first description of emotive attitudes expressed towards death utilising textual sentiment analysis for the dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance. A linguistic lexicon of sentiment norms was applied to activities conducted in an online course for the general-public designed to generate discussion about death. We analysed the sentiment of words people chose to describe feelings about death, for themselves, for perceptions of the feelings of ‘others’, and for longitudinal changes over the time-period of exposure to a course about death (n = 1491). The results demonstrated that sadness pervades affective responses to death, and that inevitability, peace, and fear were also frequent reactions. However, words chosen to represent perceptions of others’ feelings towards death suggested that participants perceived others as feeling more negative about death than they do themselves. Analysis of valence, arousal and dominance dimensions of sentiment pre-to-post course participation demonstrated that participants chose significantly happier (more positive) valence words, less arousing (calmer) words, and more dominant (in-control) words to express their feelings about death by the course end. This suggests that the course may have been helpful in participants becoming more emotionally accepting in their feelings and attitude towards death. Furthermore, the change over time appeared greater for younger participants, who showed more increase in the dominance (power/control) and pleasantness (valence) in words chosen at course completion. Sentiment analysis of words to describe death usefully extended our understanding of community death attitudes and emotions. Future application of sentiment analysis to other related areas of health policy interest such as attitudes towards Advance Care Planning and palliative care may prove fruitful.

Attitudes of Palestinian and Polish Medical Students Towards Death

Attitudes of students of health-related subjects towards the death are an important issue showing the behaviour and values ​​that guide young people in everyday interactions. The study was conducted using the Questionnaire About Attitudes Against Death (DAP-R-PL) among 309 students, including 150 Palestinian from the Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences and 159 Polish from the Faculty of Health Sciences. It was noticed that the attitude of Death Avoidance is higher in Palestinians than in Poles. The biggest difference between correlation indicators is for the factors fear of death and death avoidance (FD and DA). This value is positive for Palestinian respondents and negative for Polish respondents. The study confirms that the attitudes of students towards death from both universities in the perspective of 5 factors are positive and in future contacts with dying patients they will cope with this challenge.

Increased Amygdala Activations during the Emotional Experience of Death-Related Pictures in Complicated Grief: An fMRI Study

Complicated grief (CG) is associated with alterations in various components of emotional processing. The main aim of this study was to identify brain activations in individuals diagnosed with CG while they were observing positive, negative, and death-related pictures. The participants included 19 individuals with CG and 19 healthy non-bereaved (NB) individuals. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were obtained during an emotional experience task. The perception of death-related pictures differed between the CG group and the NB group, with a greater activation in the former of the amygdala, putamen, hypothalamus, middle frontal gyrus, and anterior cingulate cortex. Amygdala and putamen activations were significantly correlated with Texas Revised Inventory of Grief scores in the CG group, suggesting that the higher level of grief in this group was associated with a greater activation in both brain areas while watching death-related pictures. A significant interaction between image type and group was observed in the amygdala, midbrain, periaqueductal gray, cerebellum, and hippocampus, largely driven by the greater activation of these areas in the CG group when watching death-related pictures and the lower activation when watching positive-valence pictures. In this study, individuals with CG showed significantly distinct brain activations in response to different emotional images.

Assessment of Emotional Experience and Emotional Recognition in Complicated Grief

There is substantial evidence of bias in the processing of emotion in people with complicated grief (CG). Previous studies have tended to assess the expression of emotion in CG, but other aspects of emotion (mainly emotion recognition, and the subjective aspects of emotion) have not been addressed, despite their importance for practicing clinicians. A quasi-experimental design with two matched groups (Complicated Grief, N = 24 and Non-Complicated Grief, N = 20) was carried out. The Facial Expression of Emotion Test (emotion recognition), a set of pictures from the International Affective Picture System (subjective experience of emotion) and the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised (psychopathology) were employed. The CG group showed lower scores on the dimension of valence for specific conditions on the IAPS, related to the subjective experience of emotion. In addition, they presented higher values of psychopathology. In contrast, statistically significant results were not found for the recognition of emotion. In conclusion, from a neuropsychological point of view, the subjective aspects of emotion and psychopathology seem central in explaining the experience of those with CG. These results are clinically significant for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts working in the field of grief and loss.