Rise in people found dead and decomposed suggests breakdown of support networks, say researchers

Researchers have raised concerns over the increasing number of people in England and Wales whose bodies have begun to decompose by the time they are discovered—a signal, they said, of “wider societal breakdowns of both formal and informal social support networks.”1The research team from the University of Oxford and Imperial College London analysed Office for National Statistics data from 1979 to 2020, using deaths coded as “unattended” (R98) and “other ill-defined and unknown causes of mortality” (R99) as a proxy for deaths where people had started to decompose.They found a steady increase in these undefined deaths over the 40 year period, from 50 deaths in 1979 (0.0086% of all deaths) to 1159 in 2020 (0.19%). The annual number of undefined deaths has remained above 1000 since 2006.Theodore Estrin-Serlui, coauthor and a histopathology registrar at Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust, said, “Many people would be shocked that someone can lie dead…
Read Original Article: Rise in people found dead and decomposed suggests breakdown of support networks, say researchers »