Compass Regional Hospice will host a free, community screening of the documentary “Being Mortal” on Thursday, February 23, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., Todd Performing Arts Center at Chesapeake College, 1000 College Circle in Wye Mills. After the screening, audience members can participate in a guided conversation led by Sharon Loving, Supervisor of Support Services, Compass Regional Hospice, on how to take concrete steps to identify and communicate wishes about end-of-life goals and preferences. Following the guided conversation there will be light refreshments and a time of fellowship.

“Being Mortal” delves into the hopes of patients and families facing terminal illness. The film investigates the practice of caring for the dying and explores the relationships between patients and their doctors. It follows a surgeon, Dr. Atul Gawande, as he shares stories from the people and families he encounters. When Dr. Gawande’s own father gets cancer, his search for answers about how best to care for the dying becomes a personal quest. The film sheds light on how a medical system focused on a cure often leaves out the sensitive conversations that need to happen so a patient’s true wishes can be known and honored at the end.

“Being Mortal” underscores the importance of people planning ahead and talking with family members about end-of-life decisions.

Seventy percent of Americans say they would prefer to die at home, but nearly 70 percent die in hospitals and institutions. Ninety percent of Americans know they should have conversations about end-of-life care, yet only 30 percent have done so.

In February 2015, “Being Mortal” aired nationally on the PBS program “Frontline.” For more information about the film, visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/being-mortal/. The film is adapted from Dr. Gawande’s 2014 nationally best-selling book of the same name. More information about the book is at https://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/.

The free screening is made possible by a grant from The John and Wauna Harman Foundation in partnership with the Hospice Foundation of America.

For more information and to RSVP to the free screening of “Being Mortal,” contact Allison Wood, awood@compassregionalhospice. org, 443-262-4117.

Lynn L. West, PhDc, LCPC questions in the December 2016 issue of “Your Health” why men and women often have trouble discussing and resolving issues of conflict between them.

She suggests that the answer might be found in neuroscience studies of differences in male and female brains. She reports studies show, on average, male brains are slightly larger, by five ounces, than an adult female brain. However, female brains comprise much more white matter tissue in volume than male brains do.

The brain pathways located in the white matter cells are rich connections to emotional centers of the brain, which suggests that the reason females are tied more to emotions as part of their experience is due to their white matter dominance and the areas of the brain that women use.

Males, on the other hand, primarily process their experiences through the gray matter or association cortex areas of the prefrontal cortex, which involves facts rather than emotional connections.

When women want to discuss an issue, their discussion almost always includes the issue and a lot of emotional content involving their feelings. Interestingly, men have learned over time that the women’s emotional reaction is a reflection of something the man is doing. That is, women are looking for a change in a man’s behavior when they discuss an issue.

Men want to avoid emotionality and will adjust their behavior until they notice the woman showing signs that she is happy again and not angry with them. Men, as a group, learned to avoid blame and manage a woman’s emotional discharges by adjusting their behavior (not changing it). When the man’s behavior continues, a woman might say, “He just doesn’t get it.” The answer is often found to be that the issue has not been addressed, because it gets drowned out in the emotional expression.

Another area of misunderstanding for women is when they ask a man to help them do something that is outside of the normal routine of expectations for the man.

Women ask other women, all the time, to assist them in some way by lending hand to what needs to be done. Men want to be acknowledged for going above and beyond what is normally expected of them. Women do not understand this dynamic because women operate differently.

Men will do what is asked, one time, and expect appreciation every time they do something extra. Women learning this principle will make communication much easier and help to resolve conflicts.