Past Programs
Death - 2003
A Mental Health Odyssey in India. Episode 3 "Kendra's Story: A Foreigner in India"
16/03/2003
Four years ago, Kendra, an American expat, arrived in the
bustling metropolis of Chennai in the south of India with her German
diplomat husband and their 4 children. Just six months later her youngest
child, Sascha, died suddenly one night from respiratory failure. It was a
tragedy that shook her to the core and took her on a search for meaning in
suffering - in a land that is, all at once, embracing and alienating. How
does one's mind possibly cope with such all encompassing grief?
See also the companion written feature for this series, Troubled Minds: Madness and Culture, on the ABC's Online gateway to Science, The Lab.
Summer Series 6: Brain Death
02/02/2003
The organ transplant industry has given life to thousands of people. But it has also given us a new type of human: the beating heart cadaver, whose cerebral functions have shut down, but whose blood is still circulating in order to keep vital organs fresh. Until the early 1970s, such a person would have been considered alive. But since the concept of brain death was introduced, we now have to grapple with a new set of ethical questions and a new understanding of what it means to be human.
