When it comes to choosing a profession, most people pick jobs which are not only comfortable but also ones where they don't have to deal with too many people. When people do enjoy working with the general public, they tend to prefer to work with the living rather than the dead. But there are some professions which are more obscured from view, both by our society and our own fears of our own mortality.
These professions include things like mortuary science, embalming, forensics pathology, medical examiners, and other occupations that deal with the dead. Plenty of crime shows cover the individuals who aid in catching killers or determining the cause of death, but rarely do we think about those charged with cleaning up the dead, and somebody's got to do it. Here are ten facts about the gruesome process of suicide and death cleanup, because the dead can't clean up after themselves.
10. Professionals
There is a high amount of professionalism in the field of death and suicide trauma cleanup, which is understandable, considering that most property owners don't want to clean up after their tenants or others who may have died in their establishments or homes, and that's where trained groups of professionals come in. But beyond just cleaning up after death, many of these companies specialize in cleaning up after other sorts of traumatic events, such as burglary or vandalism. This diversifies the portfolio of such professionals, whose jobs all too often consist of scraping human or animal brain matter off of a wall or shower.
Many franchises have sprung up around the thriving industry of people who are willing to clean up others' most gruesome messes for them, and franchisees can buy into companies that specialize in the cleaning up of corpses—and more. The industry is booming as people become more and more hygienic and less interested in removing the dead, something people in years past just accepted as a fact of life.
Suicide and trauma cleanup specialists need to comply with many standards in many places, including licensing, certifications, and environmental rules. A lot of safety is on the line, and these specialists need to maintain a professional attitude during the most gruesome of tasks.
9. Suicide
When it comes to cleaning up scenes of death, suicide is the most pure scene one can tackle. These deathscapes are the least touched by investigators, as detectives and police are generally able to identify a suicide easily, and they collect the least amount of evidence, if any, for future use. When a homicide occurs, it becomes a crime scene, and the cleaning crew picks up what the investigators don't.
There is another reason that the business of dead body cleanup is thriving in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world: Suicide is on the rise. According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide rates have risen over 25 percent in the United States since 1999, which is an astonishing rate of people taking their lives. Suicide is a massive contributing factor to the decrease in US life expectancy as well as the death rate, which recently went up for the first time in ages from 2014 to 2016. More deaths equals more bodies, which inevitably equals more business.
With suicides rising sharply, the need for suicide cleanup in particular has become increasingly vital. With an average of 113 suicides taking place every single day in the US alone, that makes for a lot of deathscapes that need to be cleaned up.
8. Unattended Death
Unattended death is another form of messy cleanup service that these companies offer. An unattended death is the death of a friend or loved one that took place when no one else was around. Types of unattended deaths include suicide but also more broadly include homicide, diseases, and natural causes, as well as things like falls and accidental deaths.
