予防医学と臨床死生学のあいだ : health educationとdeath educationの綜合の可能性

抄録

Health education that hides away senility and death is blind. Death education that talks only of death itself and the future life after death is empty. A critical synthesis of these two schools of education will be explored. In the lifestyle modification movement of modern health education, in which nurses set forth the notion of transcendent health, diseases and death are regarded as a failure or penalty for not maintaining a healthful lifestyle. This is false. Death education should be introduced into health education. The question is, in what way ? Death education as such lacks unity, in purpose, principle and method. Here we ask for a form of death education that could be harmonized with health education for everybody. Religious death education is not suitable for public health. Some look upon death education as a preparation to pass away in peace, that is good death. To set up, to evaluate and grade "Quality of Death (QOD)" -this is a parody of QOL -is problematic. Some regard death education as needed in order to live well. This is an existential narrative. Is meditation on death, however, a necessary condition of good life ? After all negative death education, in contrast to positive death education, is recommended : Education which shows the limitations of medical services and human self-control.