This book wasn’t at what I was expecting. I thought it would a clinical, analytical description of the five stages of death; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This is the lingering legacy of the book. But the actual book is much more than that. It is a summation of many, many interviews with dying patients. However, the summations take the form of specific case studies of the actual dying patients and their loved ones. It is clear from what is captured that this was the result careful listening and deep respect for the suffering individuals.

The other thing that is clear is what a shift this was for the medical profession of this time in the 1960s when the focus and culture was to save lives even at the tremendous suffering and reluctance of the actual patients. And the corollary to this was a complete and utter incompetence at acceptance of death and to deal with it with understanding and compassion. Time and again Kubler-Ross makes it clear that doctors in particular were extremely hostile to the notion of hospice. They were also completely arrogant and disregarding of informing the actual patients about their prognosis. Frequently they would tell the loved ones and expect them to shield the doctor from having to confront a patient with the terminal truth.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is responsible for one of the biggest cultural and societal shifts in American life over the past half century. Today hospice is a regular and expected occurrence. Doctors are very comfortable referring patients whose life span is severely compromised. Average people are very comfortable with the option of dying with dignity and yet… There is in my opinion much farther for us to go. Millions of elderly people live very restrictive, meagre and compromised lives in assisted living facilities and nursing homes. Why is this necessarily a good thing? For them or for society. These options are extremely expensive, often still inadequate and focused on a demographic that can’t give anything back to society. While I don’t think we should treat the elderly with disrespect or deprive them of autonomy, I do think we should be more aggressive about making them comfortable with ending their lives with dignity. At sixty three I am committed to be ready and willing to die before I become apart of this saddest of communities.

Todo médico e todo estudante de medicina deveriam ler este livro. Aprender a lidar com a morte faz parte do trabalho. E reconhecer e entender isto é fundamental.

I had heard a lot about Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying, specifically as the quintessential understanding of grief. In fact, as far back as I can remember, in learning about the stages of grief, I remember it being in conjunction with Kubler-Ross’s book. However, upon reading the volume, it is very different from what I originally expected. My expectation was that the book would be research based and written in technical language. Perhaps based on case studies, but really a scientific analysis of the human experience of grief.

To my surprise, the book is anecdotal, based largely on interviews with seriously ill and dying people, and focused on the experience of approaching death, not on the experience of those who will be grieving or who are grieving the one who dies. My biggest surprise is that the book is not about mourning. There is a good discussion of grief, since there is a lot of grief involved in dying, but the focus is not as I expected.

In August, I put my dog, Boogie, to sleep. He was an amazing and loving companion who I miss dearly. It was especially difficult to face the fact that I chose to put him down, that I made the choice to end his suffering. In trying to understand my emotions and to find healthy ways to grieve, I searched out On Death and Dying. While the book does provide insight into the journey of a terminally ill patient as well as the challenges that hospital staff face with these patients, at this point, I do not believe that I gained the insight which I was looking for. The experience of dying, for an animal, is probably psychologically quite different for an animal than it is for a human. I am not sorry that I read this book, but it was much different than I expected.

I took a class called "Death and Dying" in 1993 or 1994 and this was our textbook.
The class and the book changed my entire viewpoint on death, grief, letting go...everything. It was, hands-down, the best, most useful, most enlightening class I took in my undergrad career.

I kept all my literature books, my Chaucer compendium, and my Shakespeare plays and I kept this book. Moreover, I kept all the notes from this class because I knew I would need them someday.

I need them all now and I can't find the book or the folder full of notes. They are in my house, somewhere safe, somewhere where I should be able to find them because I would have put them in a findable place...but I don't know where that findable place is and it is driving me crazy.

n  "The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible?"n

Reading this while preparing to work as an intern doctor in few days felt surreal.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We have encountered the famous 5 stage of grief numerous times during our studies in med school, I never expected that reading the book where they came from would be such an eye opener.
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n  Death is still a fearful, frightening happening, and the fear of death is a universal fear even if we think we have mastered it on many levelsn

I read this sooooooooooooooo many years ago --- I wonder if I should read it again. I use to own it!

This book provides a great deal of information on death and dying. The perspective is provided from the patient's, the family's, the friend's and the provider's viewpoints.

Many significant issues are raised and addressed.

One point is made that "death is only the end of dying".

While I understand this, I don't concur. Hope is the issue that is of utmost importance. If the dying person has hope, it continues to be extremely important until either the dying person decides it is time to go or the hope is extinguished by death.

As you can see from the title, I took this book from Ari's shelf - I had never heard of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, but it seems like anyone in the medical/psychological professions have - she created the 5 stages of reaction to trauma. Anyway, this was a great read - it started stronger than it ended- she starts with laying out her philosophy on how death should be encountered by physicians and most of the rest of the book is interviews with patients. Worthwhile read if you're interested in this topic; ie end of life, the culture of taboo and defensiveness when it comes to death and mortality, discussing death with people, children etc., doctor-patient relationship as highly significant (just as much as doctor's actual knowledge) The first two chapters are wonderful with some thoughtful observations about society and human nature's encounter with mortality - one that I liked (p16) "When we look back in time and study old cultures and people, we are impressed that death has always been distasteful to man and probably always will be. From a psychiatrist's point of view this is very understandable and can perhaps best be explained by our basic knowledge that, in our unconscious, death is never possible in regard to ourselves. It is inconceivable for our unconscious to imagine an actual ending of our own life here on earth, and if this life of ours has to end, the ending is always attributed to a malicious intervention from the outside by someone else. In simple terms, in our unconscious mind, we can only be killed; it is inconceivable to die of a natural cause or of old age. Therefore, death in itself is associated with a bad act, a frightening happening, something that in itself calls for retribution and punishment."

Kubler Ross does a great job in this book reshaping an approach to death that is a more open, healthier, softer, calmer experience for those dealing with it. Especially for the doctor-patient relationship. I think this is a must read for any one who deals with death and illness.

Hmmmmm...ok, some of this was very insightful, some seemed very presumptuous . Example: at the very end, for her to decide that a bunch of chronically Ill patients who celebrated the passing of another chronically Ill patient were actually celebrating the fact that it was not them that had died....???? Now maybe I'm being presumptuous , but in my experience it's not so much a feeling of joy as a feeling of relief and it's not a celebration of that persons death because it's not you, but a celebration of their freedom from suffering. Just MHO. I would recommend it for an understanding of the stages of grief, With the understanding that there is not a set order on how one progresses through those stages. I would also caution that the case studies, in particular the transcribed interviews, were pretty poor illustrations of the concepts she was trying to prove. Then again not everyone reading this will have other examples of their own to draw from. I do plan on moving on to On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss but for someone looking to find peace in dealing with a loved ones death I would diefinitely recommend Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying instead.

This book has helped me better understand the feelings and emotions of the dying. Having lost my father to cancer not long ago, I have often found it difficult to cope and also developed a fear of death and illness. On Death and Dying might be one of those books that you might want to re-read several times just to not be oblivious and forgetful of our inevitable fate-death.

“Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body. Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment”

در قدح آب نورانی است آب دریا اما تار است
حقیقت کوچک را واژگانی است روشن
حقیقت بزرگ را اما سکوتی بزرگ است

On Death and Dying is Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' discourse on the psychological stages of grief before and after death. Ross headed a study in the 1960s where she and a team of students, doctors, and clergy interviewed patients who were suffering from various maladies with low to fair prognosis. Some of these patients knew they were in the end stages of life, others did not. Some interviewed were family members of the patients. Ross covered the various stages of death and grief and the effects on patients, family, and attending medical staff. Some were able to handle news of their prognosis better than others. Some were reluctant to talk, but all opened up once the questions began and felt better to have their stories told, their fear vocalized, and their hearts opened. It became evident that all wanted and needed to talk, even if it was just to open themselves to the inevitable.

This is a classic book written in the 60s but many of the lessons still ring true today. Everyone handles death and grief a little different but most go through the basic stages of denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Having recently lost my father and having lost my mother many years before, I realize that each died in much the same way and I now know that when it was time they were ready and were peaceful.