White Rose Bereavement & Mental Health Conference 2025

Death is an inevitable part of life, and the subject often comes up in therapy. Everyone is touched by it at some time. Feelings of grief and loss can be painful and complicated, tangled with immensely amplified emotions: sadness, anger, stress, guilt, and relief, to name a few. These can come and go throughout life, and it can be hard to navigate.

With that in mind, I attended the White Rose Bereavement and Mental Health Conference at Cardiff City Stadium with an open curiosity. In counselling sessions I can face the fallout from grief and loss, months or years after the event. I was gladly not so well informed about the immediate formalities and practicalities, or the interfaith community of service providers around death in all its forms.  This post reflects on a number of the speakers and their stories, but it's by no means an exhaustive account of each talk. We heard from people of many different faiths and backgrounds, with a range of different life experiences. Radhika Kadaba of the Interfaith Council of Wales spoke about the practical concerns associated with same day and next day burials. Some faiths promote cremation within 24 hours of death to allow the spirit to continue its journey without delay. There is a sense that time and urgency is critical to the grieving process and delayed burial can be a barrier to grieving. It seemed that there was some tension between these beliefs and limitations of NHS resources and facilities, and this was behind an initiative for a national public mortuary for Wales, including MRI scanning capabilities. Mark Drakeford, Former First Minister for Wales and current Minister of Finance, spoke about how grief is part of the human condition. He encouraged an idea of learning to live with grief rather than ‘coming to terms’ with it. This was the first flavour of how conference talks can offer a window into individual vocabularies and language preferences. That is, the words people accept or reject, and how they are interpreted. Drakeford also talked about the need for support through grief, and the hopeful visualisation of future.

Traumatic death Trauma was a recurring strand through a number of talks. Conference lead, Chaplain Ahmed Alsisi of White Rose Funerals began the day by mentioning his own journey from Gaza to Cardiff. The CEO of Age Connects Cardiff then talked about losing her 15 year-old son through drowning. Hamed Amiri, bestselling author of The Boy With Two Hearts, spoke of fleeing persecution from the Taliban, traversing Russia and many countries across Europe then arriving in the UK, before losing an older brother to a congenital heart condition. Amiri talked about learning to be tough, resilience (another popular word), and hope (another). It made me reflect again about the power of creativity in making meaning and sense from death, trauma, and relationships. Whether through writing, journalling (as I sometimes recommend to clients), painting, music, or drama. It's absolutely an option, but can come with layers of risk and complication: the awkward tension between isolated expression for one's self, and the desire for audience, attention, profit. It's a tension I have often grappled with myself. Rhian Mannings of 2Wish shared her story of losing one of her three children, before her husband took his own life. She then established 2Wish, a charity that supports families who suddenly lose children or young people. They are connected by hospitals and police, before reaching out and visiting the bereaved. Nicola Abraham founded the Jacob Abraham Foundation to address suicide prevention after her son took his own life. She spoke openly about feeling embarrassed and shamed, sensitive to the judgement of others and how she became ostracised from a neighbour who lost her son through natural causes. She also mentioned how her son Jac’s childhood best friend went on to take his own life 9 months after Jac. An associated counsellor Bryn Morgan affirmed the importance of speaking directly to people about suicide, rather than avoiding the subject. Expert NHS Wales Compassion Following the thread of expert professional compassion were Kim Hampton-Evans, Care After Death Service Manager at Swansea Bay University Health Board, and Donna Morgan, Bereavement Clinical Lead at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board. Both impressed the need for empathy alongside a professional service, and an understanding that behind each necessary protocol is a grieving family. Resilience came up again here, this time in the context of adapting or coping with the immediate situation of death. But I wondered if it couldn’t also be applied to endurance, to simply continuing through the administration of death, the possessions and house clearances, before the grieving can begin. Speakers applied different ideas and use subtly different definitions when using certain words, including ‘trauma’. Some appeared to believe trauma could be healed. Others, it was something to be lived with. There is another philosophical idea that trauma does not exist at all. It is merely the meaning we apply to things that happened to us, and how that might give purpose. These things are different for us all, depending on our life experience, and perhaps there is grace in accepting that subjectivity. Hearing from the NHS staff and chatting to an exhibitor from Marie Curie reminded me of a period when I interviewed a number of nurses on behalf of the Royal College of Nursing Wales. I remember feeling incredibly impressed by the professionalism and wisdom of sometimes very young people during the time of the pandemic, when everyone was scared. I also recall how they themselves described feeling humbled and honoured to work so closely with people in the late stages of dying.

Police, medical examination, and coroners On the flipside of the raw emotion are the necessary formalities involved with death. Dr Jason Shannon, Lead Medical Examiner of NHS Wales and formerly a pathologist, gave an insight into the formal process of reporting and certifying deaths, and referring to coroners if needed. Into the afternoon, South Wales Police introduced their religion and belief app containing information and awareness for officers working with multifaith groups. Senior Detective Inspector Matt Powell discussed supporting families through homicide, kidnap, repatriation, and accidental deaths. He told of one instance when where the ceremonial rights of a family came into difficult conflict with an ongoing criminal process. Among the most insightful for me were the senior coroners Caroline Saunders, who led for her initially absent colleague Graeme Hughes, who later made a cameo. Saunders spoke with what appeared like a courtroom-honed confidence and eloquence, addressing dignity in death, the public perception of coroners, and suicide. She discussed how the mention of coroners has a common public connotation with criminality and blame, perhaps due to the popularity of crime in modern culture through film, television, and fiction. Although the role of coroners is to produce detailed reports that describe the individual situations of unexpected deaths, and refer them on if needed. Saunders also addressed the difficult question of why death by suicide tends to cause so much more anguish. Her theory is that this is due to the fact it can’t and won’t ever be fully explained. Unnatural causes of death can be explained when it’s not suicide, but we can never fully know the inner workings of another person’s mind, and an inquest won’t answer all the questions family have. She advocated for better communication, support and training, as well as more inter-agency working. 

The close working relationship between Detective Inspector Powell and the coroners was illuminated through a story of middle-of-the-night text messages sent by Powell, which wakes up coroners to homicides and alerts them to a new case. Imagine going to sleep each night in the knowledge that you could be woken by a text message alerting you to murder, and work. This was a truly insightful and educational event to attend. Thank you to Ahmed and everyone at White Rose for the invitation.