'Some words about death...'. Observations concerning death of some psychiatric patients

Psychiatric institutions, as also medical ones, appear particularly afraid of meeting death, because of its symbolic implications. Beside a higher mortality among mental patients, when compared to the general population, stands the empirical observation that psychiatrists are only seldom engaged in treating dying patients. On the basis of these assumptions, the authors examine briefly some emblematic case histories of patients who died during admission or soon after their discharge from the General Hospital Psychiatric Ward of Pavia, Italy. They underline some peculiarities of dying in psychiatry and consider what happened among the staff before the death of those patients.