New Delhi, Oct. 8 -- In my 25 years of working in mental health and wellbeing, I have come to think of avoidance as the most expensive habit most of us keep without ever noticing we have it. Every avoided decision buys small, immediate relief. What it costs is the chance to decide something for ourselves, on our own terms, before circumstances decide it for us. Few questions prove this as reliably as what we want done with our own bodies after we die, and whether we wish to become organ donors.

Personal discomfort around organ donation is understandable

We tend to treat hesitation about organ donation as a failure of generosity or understanding. But this reticence is usually neither. A study across Chandigarh and Chennai found that peop...