Chapter 11 Experiences, Coping and Correlates of Encountering Death: Implications for Social Work Education and Practice Archana Kaushik Abstract Death connotes a mysterious and inevitable reality of existence. Since pre-modern to post-modern times, notion of death has seen changes from natural acceptance to a fear-inducing, frightening phenomenon. Death of loved ones poses one of the most stressful events incurring insecurity, inability, fear, depression, and such other emotions and thoughts of one’s mortality are considered bizarre. The present study aims to find how individuals comprehend and cope with death in their professional and personal life and examine the factors that influence differential experiences and correlates of death. With descriptive and exploratory research design, in-depth interviews of nine individuals were taken who were dealing with death. Findings show gendered difference in coping with death. Death of an old person is accepted easily in contrast to that of a young. Impersonality can be maintained in death of others in professional engagement, while death of loved ones has totally different implications. Culture plays crucial role in perception of and dealing with death. Insights on needs of death education and social work response are derived from the cases in the study keeping in mind the cross-cultural contexts of Australia and India. Keywords Death · Social work education · Interdisciplinary approach · Cross-cultural practice Introduction Death, taken as opposite of birth or life, is a mysterious reality of existence. It is inevitable, unpredictable and universal. All human beings essentially experience death in two ways—one, witnessing death of others, including family members, rela- tives, friends, neighbours, etc., and, two, experiencing one’s own death. Medically, death means cassation of all vital life-sustaining functions of the body such as heart- beat, breathing and brain activity. It is estimated that with world death rate being A. Kaushik (B ) Department of Social Work, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India e-mail: archana_kaushik@rediffmail.com © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 I. Ponnuswami and A. Francis (eds.), Social Work Education, Research and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9797-8_11 139