“Healthy Dying”: A Paradoxical Quest Continues

Until recently the health care professions gave little systematic attention to psychosocial needs of the dying person and his or her family. There seemed to be no place for death in the prevention and cure‐oriented outlook of our health care systems. This situation is now undergoing rapid change. Analysis of our society's death system indicates that “comfort care” has started to take its place along with the more dominant death system functions of curing and killing. Particular attention is given to the emergence of the hospice movement. Improved care of the terminally ill person may not be enough, however, to meet rising expectations for a higher quality of life, in general, and in the dying situation in particular. It is suggested that our society will not be content with a terminal phase of life in which physical distress is well controlled and individual dignity maintained. Rather, we seem to be questing for a form of dying that is “healthier” than ordinary life and that actualizes values whose attainment had previously been frustrated. Pleasurable dying and glorious death may be major “consumer demands” in the future.