Social death in patients: Concept analysis with an evolutionary approach

Social death is an important concept that should be considered in a wide range of patients, especially in chronic diseases. Despite, there is still no clear and comprehensive definition of social death in medicine. The present study was thus conducted with Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis method to identify the key features and provide a clear definition of social death in patients and understand its background and consequences. Considering the stages of concept analysis, an initial search was carried out in scientific databases (PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Magiran, and SID) without time limit until 2020. The search resulted in 400 articles in the first stage, which were screened according to the study objective and, all the items and points consistent with the concept's attributes, antecedents, consequences, associated concepts, alternative terms and definition were extracted. According to the results of different studies, the attributes of social death in patients can be classified into three main themes: The loss of social identity, loss of social relations (social isolation), and deficiencies related to the inefficiency of the body and various diseases. Generally, antecedents' social death in patients can be including; the factors related to the patient, Family neglect, Medical personnel's treatment of the patient as a corpse, Having no social situation. Also, there is little information available about the effect of social death on the patients themselves and their families, specialists, health care institutions and the society. Mankind's perception of social death is multidimensional and may have consequences such as bad death, disgraceful death deprivation of belonging to the society, financial vulnerability, removed or weakened legal support, stigma, and the loss of social identity. The proper understanding of social death in patients not only determines the role and importance of care in the process of incidence of this phenomenon, but also paves the way for designing an evidence-based care program for its prevention and control.