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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1477479
This article is part of the Research Topic Mortality Saliency and Mental Health: How Could Awareness of Death Promote Well-being? View all articles

Beyond the Denial of Death: Death Meditation Increases a Sense of Connectedness and

Provisionally accepted
Enny Das Enny Das 1*Marieke Fransen Marieke Fransen 2Mary Beth Oliver Mary Beth Oliver 3
  • 1 Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  • 2 Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Gelderland, Netherlands
  • 3 The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), University Park, Pennsylvania, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The pervasive denial of death in modern society has created an unbalanced relationship with death that gets in the way of living a full life. To address this problem, the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death recently proposed principles of a healthier scenario for the future. In this 'realistic utopia', death is recognized as having value, and conversations about death and dying have become common. The present research examined if art could help to decrease death denial and increase life appreciation. An art installation invited visitors to confront thoughts of their own death in a guided meditation by visualizing the decay of their own dead body. Visitors' responses were compared to those of a standard death reflection group and a neutral control group (N=229) at two time points. Feelings of being moved, connectedness to a higher power, and life appreciation were assessed immediately (T1); death reflection and life appreciation were assessed two weeks later (T2) (N=105). At T1, the art installation induced higher levels of being moved and connectedness to a higher power than the two control groups. At T2, the art installation induced more lingering reflection than the two control groups. Lingering reflection, in turn, increased appreciation of life. We show that art can be harnessed to promote a more balanced relationship with death, and greater appreciation of life. The art installation provided individuals with concrete, and more encompassing simulations of what death could be like. By placing death in this bigger perspective, the art installation encouraged conscious death reflection. Such a connected perspective is often lacking, but direly needed, in healthcare and in larger society.

    Keywords: death, Art, Mortality salience, eudaimonia, Connectedness, Life appreciation

    Received: 07 Aug 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Das, Fransen and Oliver. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Enny Das, Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.