Death and the Very Elderly

Older seniors are often willing to talk about death, but they’re rarely asked about it. British researchers interviewed several dozen people over 95 years of age about their attitudes on death and end-of-life care and noted that most of them felt prepared to die. Study leader Dr. Jane Fleming explains, “Death is clearly a part of life for people who have lived to such an old age, so the older people we interviewed were usually willing to discuss dying, a topic often avoided.” She adds that in order to better support men and women dying at increasingly older ages “we need to understand their priorities as they near the end of life.”
PLOS ONE, April 2016