PSY333H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Hypoesthesia, Curative Care, Assisted Suicide
17 views6 pages
Health Psychology- Lecture #9
June 18, 2012
What are the leading causes of death in Canada today?
•Cancer
•Heart disease
•Stroke
•Respiratory disease
•Accidents
•Diabetes
•Alzheimer’s disease
Death as a function of age
When and how do people die?
•Average Canadian life expectancy: 80.3 years
- World-wide: 78 years
•Beginning of 20th century: 47.3 years
- Why the huge increase?
•Decrease death from acute illnesses
•Decrease infant mortality
- 1940: 47 deathsa/1000 live births
- 2006: 6.7 deaths/1000 live births
Death in infancy or childhood
•Infant mortality rate: ratio of deaths to live births
- 5.1/1000 births
- Relatively high compared with Western Europe
- Used to be in 6th place 24th in 2007
•Effects of SES
- 4.0/1000 in richest neighbourhood
- 6.5/1000 in poorest
•Effects of culture
- First nations> non-first nations\
Leading causes of death
•Birth to 1 year: congenital abnormalities and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
- SIDS: 3 babies die/week in Canada (2005)
- Babies simply stop breathing
- More likely to occur in lower-class urban environments, when mom smoked
during pregnancy, when baby is put to sleep on stomach
- Back to Sleep campaign (1999)- reduced by SIDS by approximately 50%
•From ages 1-15, the causes shift to accidents (i.e. poisonings, falls) and childhood
leukemia
- Leukemia: cancer of bone marrow excess white blood cell + severe
anemia (80% survival rate today!)
Children’s understanding of death
•Up to age 5: death as “great sleep”
- No understanding of death as final/irreversible
- No fear- they are curious
•5-9: death as final may develop
- Most children fail to understand the biology of death
- Some children believer death is a shadowy figure (devil or ghost)
•9-10: “death is universal and inevitable”
- Understand processes that go along with death
- Realize that person will not return
Death in young adulthood
•Leading causes of death for youth (aged 15 to 24):
1. Unintentional injury (usually automobile accidents)
2. Suicide
3. Cancer
4. Homicide
- Leading cause of death for young black males
•Heart/respiratory diseases and congenital abnormalities
•Diagnosis of terminal illness long and drawn out period of dying because fewer
biological competitors for death
Death in middle age
•Death becomes more realistic for two reasons:
- More common
- Development of chronic health problem that ultimately leads to death
•Premature death: death that occurs before age of 79
- Main cause is heart attack or stroke (brain attack)
- Death rates on the decline—less smoking!
•Midlife crisis
- May occur in the 40s or 50s
- Stems from the realization of impending death
- Set off by death of a parent, friend, or bodily signs that one is aging
- Sometimes abrupt life changes are a result of the midlife crisis (seen as
trying to postpone death) i.e. feeling younger