Death Education: the case of a group of adolescents

Abstract

This article attempts to explore and clarify the theme of death from an educational perspective, through a group intervention and a study conducted on 100 high school students. Death education is conducted through one experiential group, where youth can discuss mourning, loss, separation, death, and life in their own experiences. Participants of this study struggled with ambivalent emotions when facing the polarity of death and life: for instance, they mentioned both hate and love when freely associating with the word ‘life’. Adults often share the erroneous idea that death is not part of the adolescent experience. On the contrary, 89% of the boys and girls stated they experienced a mournful event, even in spheres such as friendship and family. Specifically, 24% of them have had to deal with the death of a friend. This article suggests the necessity of working with small psychodynamic groups when addressing silence and denial which surround the ideas of separation, end, loss, and death working with teen groups.