For some, the prospect of dying at home is far more comforting than passing on in a foreign environment like a hospital. For patients suffering from life-threatening diseases such as advanced cancer or HIV/AIDS, researchers have found that it not only benefits the patient emotionally by being surrounded by family and a familiar environment but their caregivers as well.

The study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that cancer patients who die in the hospital or in an Intensive Care Unit have a lower quality of life at the time of passing in comparison to patients who die at home with hospital services. Their caregivers are said to be five times more likely to develop psychiatric illnesses during bereavement if the patient dies in a hospital.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the serious psychiatric issues that these caregivers are subjected to. PTSD is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma such as the death of a loved one.

The study involved performing interviews on patients and caregivers at the beginning of the study as well as regular interviews on the caregivers once their patients had passed showed some shocking results.

After analyzing the data on 342 patients and their respective caregivers, the researchers found that patients who had died in a hospital or in an ICU ward experienced more physical and emotional distress and worse quality of life than those who died at home, surrounded by loved ones, their personal    belongings and qualified caregivers. 

Of the patients who had died, the study determined that 21% of caregivers went on to develop PTSD if their patient had passed in a hospital; where as only 4.4% of caregivers developed PTSD as a result of their patient passing in the sanctuary of their own home.

“This is the first study to show that caregivers of patients who die in ICU’s are at a heightened risk for developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” said the authors, led by Alex Wright, a medical oncologist and outcomes researcher at Dana-Farber.

According to Wright, this poses a new worry to terminally ill patients as, with this information, patients might begin to make different decisions for the sake of their loved ones and not just for what is preferable to them.

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