Psychosocial Demands in Death Care During COVID-19 Pandemic: Qualitative Study on Italian Workers

The outbreak of COVID-19 was a major shock to the world’s population, bringing with it a range of governmental, societal and individual challenges. Unpreparedness for this unforeseen event made it difficult to manage the pandemic, especially the policy of containing the virus. There were several abrupt changes in the social environment: the lockdowns imposed in many cities led many people to stay at home, which radically changed lifestyles, and many activities shifted to remote work (Grandi et al. 2021b; Grandi et al. 2022). However, some professions were still “in presence” to ensure the continuation of services defined as “essential”. In the field of care services, healthcare professionals were on the frontline to respond to the ongoing emergency, facing a situation full of uncertainty, a high workload and a high risk of contagion. The interest in the working conditions and health of these workers has been remarkable, both from the media and the point of view of research (Vizheh et al. 2020). Surprisingly, another professional group that continued to perform an activity considered essential on a social level, namely death care workers, has received little attention regarding the physical, biological and psychosocial risks they were exposed to during the pandemic. In fact, professionals in this sector were also on the frontline—as healthcare and emergency service workers—as they were responsible for the preparation, disposal and burial of bodies at a historical moment when mortality was very high and when funeral practices underwent profound changes. To date, few studies have examined the critical situation experienced by death care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic (Van Overmeire et al. 2021; Van Overmeire and Bilsen 2020; Durand-Moreau and Galarneau 2021; Clavandier et al. 2021); further research is therefore needed to gain deeper knowledge about this particular professional context.