“In a hospital where my father took his last breath, I had to run from one counter to another just to get his death certified.”That sentence alone should make us pause. But it’s the reality of what grieving families go through an inefficient, emotionless process that forces the bereaved to relive their worst moment, paper by paper.
A few days after my father passed away at a local government hospital, I returned to those same hospital corridors not to mourn, but to navigate a tangle of bureaucratic steps. I had to visit the very ward where we had lost him, wait for doctors to finish rounds, then move from one office to another to collect forms, signatures, stamps, a slow and emotionally taxing loop.
Each stop from the ward to the Medicine Office, the Medical Superintendent’s office, and finally to the MRD section dragged me deeper into a grief I was barely holding at bay. The staff, to their credit, were mostly kind. But the system? Cold, confusing, and relentless.This is not a critique of people. It’s a critique of a system that expects broken families to hold themselves together just long enough to do the hospital’s paperwork.
Why can’t there be a single-window system, one office, one point of contact, that handles the process after a family submits basic ID and documentation? Why must we place the burden on people at their most vulnerable?
Healthcare should not end at death. Compassion must extend to the systems that come after it. A caregiver should not have to walk the same halls that witnessed their worst day, just to complete forms that could be coordinated internally.
This isn’t just about one family; countless others face similar pain, often silently. Fragmented systems contribute to mental health challenges, caregiver burnout, and prolonged grief.
A large 2015 survey by Médecins Sans Frontières, and Kashmir University reported that nearly 1.8 million adults (45% of the adult population) in the Kashmir Valley experience symptoms of mental distress, with 41% exhibiting signs of probable depression, 26% probable anxiety, and 19% probable PTSD.
According to the World Health Organization, mental health issues like depression and anxiety cost the global economy over US$1 trillion annually. In India, the estimated loss due to mental illness is projected to exceed $1 trillion between 2012 and 2030.
In such a high-burden context, even routine hospital procedures can act as triggers for deeper psychological trauma, especially for grieving families.We can’t fix grief. But we can, and must, fix the processes that follow it.
As a Kashmiri society, that values compassion and respect for the deceased, we must reimagine how we handle death related formalities. I write this not in anger, but in hope that someone from the local health administrationtakes notice, simplifies and humanise this process.
At a time when families need space to heal, they should not be navigating paperwork. Let hospitals provide a single-window service, where families submit required identification and are told, with dignity, “We will take care of the rest.”
(The Author works at the Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Australia. His current work focuses on mental health and suicide prevention. Feedback: [email protected])
