PhD. Carl B. Becker

Why Funerals Matter – and How to Help Mourners in Grief

by Prof. Carl Becker, Kyoto University School of Medicine

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carl-Becker-2

Speaker

Prof. Carl Becker received his PhD on Death and Dying from the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii. Teaching philosophy at SIU Carbondale, he helped establish SIU-C’s Mortuary Science and Funeral Service Department. In 1983 he moved to Japan, where he taught at National Osaka, Tsukuba, and Kyoto Universities. In 1986 he received the SIETAR Award for Cross-Cultural Understanding, in 2009, the Honda award from the Emperor for his studies of death and dying, in 2018, an Honorary Doctorate in Psychology from the Moscow Graduate Institute of Psychoanalysis for his work counseling bereaved clients, and in 2021, the Association of Death Education and Counseling award as Educator on Death and Dying. Now Professor of the Policy Science Unit at Kyoto University's School of Medicine, Becker leads a national survey of bereavement, and supports terminal patients and suicidal survivors. He serves on the editorial boards of Mortality, Journal of Near-Death Studies, Journal for the Study of Spirituality, and many other medical journals. 

During the conference at the FIAT-IFTA 2025 ICD meeting in Yokohama, Japan,

Dr. Becker will speak on “Why Funerals Matter – and How to Help Mourners in Grief,” advancing beyond the presentation he delivered to FIAT-IFTA 2024 Krakow.

Introduction

Funeral directors are often the first professionals to have quality time with the bereaved, who are freshly wounded by their loss of a loved one. Mourners’ first impressions and interactions can strengthen or scar them for years thereafter. Japan has the world’s eldest population, meaning that deaths and funerals are rising—as will soon happen worldwide.  Our survey of thousands of Japanese bereaved confirms that funerals and rituals affect the bereavement trajectory—including their health and dependence on medical and social services—and more importantly, sheds insights into funeral services most appreciated or helpful to the bereaved.

So bereavement imposes financial as well as emotional costs on society, because bereaved people produce less but depend on medical and social services more. 

Traditionally, funerals assuaged grief by giving it approval, ritual expression, and social support, yet little research examines how funerals affect bereavement’s productivity costs or medical complications. We wanted to know what types of bereaved people were most likely to need what kinds of medical or social support, and how funerals affect their grief. With support from the Japan Ministry of Education and Science and the All Japan Funeral Co-operation®, our national survey of recently bereaved explores these issues.

We found intriguing correlations between grief and use of medical and social services. Our statistical correlations found that funeral dissatisfaction aggravates psychological and somatic symptoms of grief, causing greater reliance on public medical and pharmaceutical services–especially among those who abbreviate funerals! The research team hypothesized that people with low or declining incomes would find funerals more burdensome, but the people expressing greater dissatisfaction were those who abbreviated funerals - those who later showed more physical and psychological problems! Our results give many suggestions about what funerals do well, and what might be improved.