DEATH CAFE: AN INVITATION TO TALK ABOUT DEATH IN TIMES OF INTERDICTION

Abstract

Nowadays talking about death is seeing as taboo all over western world, making human beings avoid it as inherent part of life.This current study, in qualitative character, has as general subject: searching for evidences that talks and meetings with story-sharing about death could improve the human relationship with the theme.As researching object we choose "Death Cafe", a project for creating a space for sharing and talk about death freely. To collect data, semi-structured interviews were done with two responsible organizers from "Death Cafe" in Belo Horizonte, and another person with a similar project in another city in Minas Gerais state.We also interviewed four participants from the event, recorded in audio with full transcription for analysis.The study was approved at Ethics & Research Committee of PUC Minas University, and all the participants signed free and informed consent form.The main results we have found revealed that death still is being treated as a taboo, and the motivation behind the search for talks and meetings to share about the theme, has as main reason, personal experiences of the participants with death.We identified that talking about death change the way people think and deal with mourning, showing clearly how important it can be and the potential of this kind of meetings as mental health promoter.