This new initiative will give local students access to a wide range of hard copy and electronic books on dying, death and bereavement. This will allow them to explore ideas and thoughts on the subject from a range of different perspectives and it will also help them with further studies.
A Death Positive Library provides a range of innovative activities and resources for those people living, working or studying in their community. It aims to remove the barriers of talking about death and dying. The College’s Death Positive Library at its Trostan Avenue campus will have a dedicated bookshelf, where students can brouse the wide range of books available to them, to assist with their studies.
Angela Dynes, Northern Regional College library manager, explained the need for a death positive library
“Studies indicate that more than 70% of us avoid talking about death and dying. We live in a death phobic society and yet we will face our own death one day. We will be impacted by death and dying multiple times as carers and as people living with bereavement. As a result of our reluctance to reclaim the ‘D’ word, those who are dying and those close to them, feel socially isolated and lonely. Developing the death positive library has been a wonderful opportunity to build on our successful partnership with the Northern Trust and extend the collection of available resources to support the health and wellbeing of our College community. This is such an important subject which impacts on us all, yet so many of us find it difficult to talk about. This collection of books will offer a good starting point into a sensitive and challenging topic, as well as foster conversations to support one another.”
Jenny Small, Vice Principal for Performance and Development at Northern Regional College, added
“This important collaboration will help our learners and staff to address some of their fears and concerns as they face bereavement and loss and support their mental health during an extremely difficult and emotional time for them.”
The Northern Health and Social Care Trust in collaboration with NRC hope to launch a further Death Positive Library over the coming months.
Hugh Nelson, Head of Health and Wellbeing, Northern Trust explained that
“It is important that we continue to support people with their grief and to encourage a planned approach to all aspects of preparing for and living with death. The Compassionate Communities NI website https://compassionatecommunitiesni.com/ hosts a range of helpful resources. Our Death Positive Library initative with NRC widens access to resources that people need.”
The Death Positive Library is an especially important initiative to increase the public’s death literacy. The books in the library educate us on the process of dying, how we can plan for death and how we can adjust to a new life after the death of someone close. Knowledge and understanding also empowers us to be more compassionate and gives us confidence to offer support to others. To find out about other Death Positive Libraries for the public in Northern Ireland go to the Compassionate Communities NI website.
Death is no surprise – no one is getting out of this life alive – so let’s start talking about it.