title: Mortality and medicine: forms of silence and of speech.
abstract: Silence can be harmful to patients, their loved ones, and doctors within the contexts of illness and bereavement. I draw from my experience with my son's illness and death to discuss five forms of silence--the silence around the experience of critical illness; the silence between life and death; the silence of doctors; the silence of the dead, and the silence of the ill--and of speech that may emerge in response to these silences.
authors.affiliation: Yale School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, 205 Whitney Avenue, Suite 306, New Haven, CT 06511, USA. michael.rowe@yale.edu
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rowe
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001601:Bereavement; D003142:Communication; D016638:Critical Illness / Q000523:psychology; D003643:Death; D006801:Humans; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010820:Physicians; D011368:Professional-Family Relations