The Northern Health and Social Care Trust has launched a ‘Death Positive Library’ in partnership with the Northern Regional College (NRC) at the Ballymena campus.
This initiative builds on the success of the ‘Read Yourself Well’ project aiming to help people understand and manage their health and wellbeing through reading.
The new Death Positive Library will give local students access to a wide range of innovative resources on dying, death and bereavement to help educate on the process of dying, how to plan for death and adjusting to life after the death of a loved one.
The literacy will aim to help students explore the subject from a range of different perspectives and help remove conversational barriers surrounding death and dying.
Angela Dynes, NRC library manager, explained the need for a death positive library:
"Studies indicate that more than 70% of us avoid talking about death and dying. Developing the death positive library has been a wonderful opportunity to build on our successful partnership with the Northern Trust and extend the collection of available resources to support the health and wellbeing of our College community.
"This is such an important subject, which affects us all, yet so many of us find it difficult to talk about. This collection of books will offer a good starting point into a sensitive and challenging topic, as well as foster conversations to support one another.”
Jenny Small, Vice Principal for Performance and Development (NRC), added:
“This important collaboration will help our learners and staff to address some of their fears and concerns as they face bereavement and loss and support their mental health during an extremely difficult and emotional time for them.”
Hugh Nelson, Head of Health and Wellbeing, Northern Trust commented:
“It is important that we continue to support people with their grief and to encourage a planned approach to all aspects of preparing for and living with death. Our Death Positive Library initiative with NRC widens access to resources that people need.”
To find out about other Death Positive Libraries visit the Compassionate Communities NI website https://compassionatecommunitiesni.com/