title: Quality insights of university students on dying, death, and death education--a preliminary study in Hong Kong.
abstract: Death is a subject seldom studied in school and often misunderstood and feared by many people. Children often learn about death from their family and mass media. From the literature review on dying, death, and death education, it may be concluded that people are generally ignorant about the issues of death and dying. There is a need to investigate what young people, such as university students, know about death and dying, and their attitudes toward them. Eight university students were recruited for this study. Most participants have had death experiences. They seldom talked about death and loss. Some of these experiences were quite pleasant but some of them were not. Most participants addressed the need to have "life and death" education in schools at their young age. Such a need is further supported by the incidents of two participants who attempted suicide unsuccessfully when they encountered a life problem which they could not solve.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories. mhjmak@cuhk.edu.hk
authors.forename: Mui Hing June
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Mak
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001293:Attitude to Death; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult