If a person has been suffering a lengthy terminal illness, is very old or loses their sense of self (for example through dementia) society may start treating the individual as if they were not fully alive. The person can be said to have died a ‘social death’ before their physical death.

This 'death in life' is seen in many societies across the world. Until a few decades ago, in some nomadic Aboriginal Australian groups, once an individual’s strength was in decline the group would feel that person had 'begun to die'. Eventually, they would be left under a tree with a bowl of water as the group moved on.

In the Andaman Islands, within recent times, if a person died after a long illness and had not played a part in the community for some time, their body would be disposed of without ceremony. That person effectively died long before their body actually did.