I find this stuff interesting »Breaking Bad News
During the second world war, service deaths were processed by the War Office in London, where civil servants typed the notification letters. Since 2005, Britain has had a Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC), an airy modern building on an army base in Gloucester. Its staff of 40 are well rehearsed in the rituals of military death. The call comes in on a secure phone line. Another name is added to the white board along with the cause of the death: KIA (killed in action), DOW (died of wounds), or FF (friendly fire). A casualty notification officer is thoroughly briefed before being dispatched to the family home; if it’s the middle of the night, they wait outside, as the policy is to let families sleep while they can. A visiting officer is deployed. PlayStations and watches are retrieved from distant camps. Letters are read and some returned to senders because not all love letters are written by wives (the JCCC know their job too well to be indiscreet). Driving licences are cancelled, headstones discussed.
In some places, the element of compassion has been taken a step further. Madrid now has a team of emergency psychologists who attend incidents alongside the police, the fire service and paramedics. Since 2003, the samur-Protección Civil emergency service has had a team of six psychologists on 24-hour shifts, responsible for breaking bad news to relatives after traffic accidents, large-scale catastrophes or the sudden death of a family member. Teresa Pacheco Tabuenca, one of the psychologists, already has a grimly distinguished CV. She was deployed to the Madrid train bombings in 2004, the ETA terrorist attack on Barajas airport in 2006, and the Madrid plane crash in 2008. “We offer care on the spot to the indirect victims of the incident—relatives, witnesses,” she says, “at the same time as the paramedics are carrying out their duties. Our job is not to remove the pain caused by a death, that is impossible, but to help reduce the emotional impact.”
(via nostrich)
