Terror management theory (TMT) asserts that cultural worldviews and self-esteem help humans manage death-related concerns. To date, most of the evidence for TMT is from Western cultures which are characterized by individualism. However, cultural values and self-esteem among East Asian cultures characterized by collectivism are distinct from ones among Western cultures. It is unclear how individualist vs. collectivist cultures influence terror management mechanisms and whether TMT findings derived from Western cultures could be generalized to East Asians cultures. This research aimed to explore cultural differences and similarities in three terror management mechanisms involving self-esteem, social norm and perception of control. 825 participants were recruited from two individualist cultures (i.e., Germany, Austria) and one collectivist culture (i.e., China) in four studies. The Pilot Study validated the mortality salience paradigm among Chinese participants. Study 1 examined whether individualists and collectivists utilize different types of self-esteem to manage existential terror. Study 1A tested the correlations between death anxiety and types of self-esteem and showed a negative correlation between death anxiety and self-liking among both Chinese and Austrian participants, but a negative correlation between death anxiety and self-competence only among Austrian participants. Studies 1B and 1C tested the correlations of personal vs. relational self-esteem with death anxiety and their moderating influence on mortality salience effects. Results revealed that for the Chinese, relational self-esteem showed a stronger negative correlation with death anxiety than did personal self-esteem. It also moderated the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. In contrast, for German participants, personal rather than relational self-esteem moderated the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. Taken together, these findings indicate that culture determines the type of self-esteem that serves as a buffer against death anxiety. According to TMT, existential terror motivates individuals to follow social norms by which they maintain self-esteem and mitigate terror. Study 2 tested this by examining the changes in self-esteem when Chinese participants followed (or violated) the modesty norm. Results revealed that mortality salience led Chinese participants to follow the modesty norm by showing explicit self-effacement, but their implicit self-esteem also decreased. Moreover, when participants were reminded of their mortality, those who violated the norm by showing explicit self-enhancement reported higher implicit self-esteem than those who followed the norm. These findings indicate that when norm and self-esteem motives collide, following the norm engendered by mortality salience does not benefit self-esteem. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thirteen nurses were interviewed over an eight week period to explore their adaptive responses to neonatal death. A process of adaptation was identified that included several phases through which these nurses proceeded before they finalized the death experience for themselves. These phases included responses to the resuscitation of the infant; the measures taken to console the bereaved parents; feelings associated with difficult moments during the dying process; the behaviors utilized to strengthen themselves before and after the death; reactions to the silence in the unit that occurred afterwards; the values they discovered when reflecting on how the death was handled; and the development of a philosophical meaning from their experiences. Data were collected and analyzed using grounded theory methodology.

The high levels of HIV/AIDS and violent crime in South Africa mean that millions of children are being forced, and will continue to be forced, to deal with the death of a parent/primary caregiver in their early and middle childhood years. Acknowledging that does not lessen the apprehension and uneasiness which lingers in formal and informal discussions of children, death, dying and grief, nor does it ameliorate the fact that childhood bereavement is becoming a normative childhood experience in South Africa. It is vital, therefore, to understand what are South African children's experiences of bereavement and grief, and to explore what impacts are likely to be exerted on their development. Children do not grieve in the same way; and children's grief is influenced by factors such as environment, unique experiences, developmental level, personality, age and gender. Family, too, is important because it is still the primary institution of society, and it influences substantially how children understand death, bereavement and grief. The school, too, has an impact on childhood grief. The majority of school-going children in South Africa are in primary school grades. Attending primary school corresponds with (most often) middle childhood, which is a critically important developmental stage. The experience of bereavement and grief during middle childhood is challenging precisely because it occurs in such a sensitive emotionally, cognitively and socially developmental period. Childhood grief experienced in that period can have long-term consequences. Important, too, is the fact that school-going children will, more than for younger children, not only experience grief privately but will grieve in public settings such as the school setting. This study, therefore, was concerned with exploring and gaining insight into the dynamics of bereavement and grief as experienced by children, who were in middle childhood, and enrolled in the primary school system. An exploratory design was chosen to explore the issue. A purposive sample was drawn from the school's list of scholars, and included 25 children attending Grades Five to Seven (Senior Primary Phase) at a co-educational, English-medium, state school. Data were collected both qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative primary data collection, involving in-depth interviews, was chosen because it allowed the researcher to explore the issue from the children's own perspectives. Each child was interviewed by the researcher over two to three sessions. Quantitative secondary data collection, involving key demographic and academic information extracted from the school's records, was included, and that helped triangulate and contextualise the data collected in the interviews. This study found that children in middle childhood do experience a diverse range of grief responses to the death of their parents/primary caregivers in the school environment, among other places, and some of those grief responses were challenging. Although respondents experienced different and confusing emotions; and although some had had their grief acknowledged by significant others, while others had not, all were able to engage in honest, clear discussions about death and grief. Respondents reported experiencing a range of secondary losses associated with the initial loss on their daily lives, and that was especially so for girl children. Respondents did know how to access support services but had not done so. The respondents also expressed a need to be encouraged to remember and memorialize their dead parent/primary caregiver. The study found, too, that the more prepared and supported the bereaved child was prior to that death, the better s/he coped with the event. Understanding children's bereavement can help those individuals and organisations, which are responsible for children's optimal development, provide children with the necessary support to prevent the child's bereavement and grief from becoming a lasting trauma. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

This dissertation documents the memories of Medellin's city dwellers and explores how people in violent urban contexts make sense of violence and deal with its presence in their lives. This study is defined as an anthropology of remembering; it is an ethnographic observation of the practices of remembering and forgetting and how these practices shape and are shaped by the lived experience of violence. The dissertation is built on extensive fieldwork in the Colombian city of Medellin with a cross section of women, youth and community leaders. The thesis argues that when the uncertainty and paradox created by widespread forms of violence threaten to destroy the social and material worlds of Colombian city dwellers, memory becomes a strategic tool for human and cultural survival. The creation of an oral history of death and the dead, the presence of a local social knowledge that assists city dwellers in their safe circulation in and through the city, and the maintenance of practices of place making are examples of how city dwellers deal with the devastating effects of violence in their lives. The thesis develops a place-based exploration of memory and violence and approaches place as a physical, sensory, social and imaginative experience that maintains a sense of continuity between the past and the every day life of Medellin's city dwellers. The two connecting concepts that ground the analysis of the relationship between people, memory and violence are those of "sense of place" and "communities of memory." The dimensions of human agency, cultural survival and human suffering are central to the exploration of memory, place and violence developed in this thesis. From this perspective, the thesis takes to task anthropological works on violence that emphasize the routinization of terror and fear for those who live amidst widespread violence. The thesis discusses the multiple ways in which memory is disputed in Colombia and the risks posed by a local reading of violence as intrinsic to the history of the country. It concludes that when individuals are faced with realities such as life and death, the familiar faces of the actors of violence and the weakening of the social and ethical fabric of their communities, they do not stand in definite positions and cannot be defined in simple terms such as victims and perpetrators. Thus, it can be recognized that although violence plays a central role in the Medellin city dwellers processes of identity formation, it does not exhaust these possibilities.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine nurses including student nurses perceptions of death education in southern Alberta as one way of improving futrue nursing curricula. Five nurse subgroups were included, as follows: college and university students, hospital nurses, community nurses, and nurse educators. A questionnaire was developed and piloted prior to distribution to 450 nurses in six locations, including two urban and four rural sites, in southern Alberta. Completed, useable returns numbered 373 (83%). Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and t-tests were used to analyze the data from scaled questionnaire items; content analysis was used to interpret written response items. Theoretical and conceptual frameworks were developed and utilized to guide the interpretation of findings. Generally, nurses perceived that existing death education remains inadequate as preparation for sound clinical nursing practice. Several statistically significant findings related to the provision of professional terminal care were reported amon the five nurse subgroups. Nurses identified concerns and deficits within existing nursing death educaiton and offered several specific suggestions for improvement. The improvement of death education for nurses will most likely result in the delivery of safe, effective, quality nursing care practice to the dying person and family. / xi, 160 leaves : ill., charts ; 28 cm.

Critical care nurses often face the ordeal of witnessing a patient's death in a tense and stressful environment. Anecdotal stories shared among nurses reveal that unusual experiences often occur at the time of or after a patient's death. This hermeneutic phenomenological study explored the meaning of these experiences for critical care nurses. Using Parse's research method, in-depth interviews were conducted with six critical care nurses who described their experiences at the time of a patient's death as well as during the post-death period. These experiences brought a sense of peace and comfort to each individual as well as reinforced their individual belief patterns about life after death. A distinctive sense of nursing knowing at the time of death was also identified. The findings of this study indicate that the experiences of the phenomenon of death by critical care nurses have a significant impact on each individual and that further research and understanding of this impact is needed. / ix, 113 leaves ; 29 cm.

This paper investigates whether or not the experience of survivors of the Holocaust through the dying process follow the stages and tasks of dying as defined in the theoretical literature and the ramifications this has for the social worker serving these individuals and their families. The methodology employed was a library search to overlay the literature on death and dying upon the literature concerning Holocaust survivors. The study concludes that, for the most part, there is little congruence between the theories of dying and the coping mechanisms of the Holocaust survivor and that a different model of death and dying is required for this population. In order to provide a preliminary model and guide workers who might encounter terminally ill survivors and their families as patients and clients, approaches for engagement, assessment, and intervention are proposed and analyzed.

The gendered construction of mourning and cleansing rites of widowhood was studied amongst the Zulu community of Ndwedwe, 70 kilometres north of Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. These cultural rites were investigated through in-depth interviews with six widowers and twelve widows. Respondents were asked about their experiences and perceptions regarding their compliance to the two rites. An analysis of these experiences, which were translated and transcribed into English, was carried out, using studies from other cultures internationally and locally as reference point, for the study. It was revealed that mourning rites, which follow death of a spouse can be stressful for both genders and must be observed strictly by the use of black or any mourning dress. The period of mourning is characterised by isolation and stigmatisation especially for the widows. Cleansing is a symbolic act that purifies all members of the household from defilement by death. This is done for all relatives following burial but a widow remains impure not less than one year of 'successful' mourning in most cases, before she is cleansed and is then absolved into society's normal life. This study has revealed that mourning and cleansing rites have psychological and physical health implications for both genders but with more negative impacts on widows than widowers. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 2003.

Bibliography: leaves 238-253. / xviii, 261 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Through a methodological blend of hermeneutics, phenomenology and social constructionism the experiences of donor parents are presented. Using a process of dialogical interpretation the themes of Unprepared, Uncertainty, Waiting, Watching, Waiting and Aloneness have been developed to expand our understanding of donor parents experiences. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Clinical Nursing, 1999

The present study involves an exploration of the phenomenological expenence of posttraumatic growth in the context of a traumatic bereavement. An idiographic case study of a student who had witnessed her mother's death twelve years previously was conducted. Semi-structured interviews elicited data which was analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IP A). Posttraumatic growth was found to have developed with regards to self-perception, relationships, and also in a broader spiritual and existential domain. The findings of this study shed light on the extant posttraumatic growth literature. In particular, findings were discussed in relation to the posttraumatic growth model as proposed by Calhoun and Tedeschi (2006). As posttraumatic growth is a relatively young concept, further research is needed in order to understand the meaning of reported growth more fully. While posttraumatic growth has been investigated in the context of bereavement, future research should distinguish more clearly between growth following traumatic and non-traumatic bereavement. Posttraumatic growth has received minimal empirical attention in South Africa, and therefore exploration of this area is suggested in the future. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in