Scholars have recognized the importance of illness narratives, and some of this work hastargeted terminal-illness stories, but little has directly addressed what distinguishes them from other illness narratives. In most illness narratives, recovery and life beyond the acute incident are a critical part of the overall experience of a disease. But terminal illness always ends with death. It has no “after.” This difference fundamentally changes how the illness is experienced – and how we should analyze a story told about it. Recognizing this distinction is important not only from a narratological perspective, but also for the study of the ways people live while dying and the models of behavior these stories reveal. I offer four ways to consider the specific genre of terminal-illness stories: the desire to tell, a turn to living dyingly, the alternative triumph, and endings-beyond-endings. These four elements recognize that terminal-illness stories are a distinct subset of illness narratives, and thus they can yield important insights unavailable through existing methods of looking at illness narratives more generally. Beyond the expanded narratological knowledge, this understanding is crucial because close listening is an ethical responsibility both to the individual and to those who come after her. Thinking about how and why people tell these stories and what we can get from them helps us see how they function in the world. That, in turn, gives us more concrete ways to think about the abstract ideas around terminal illness, dying, and death. This awareness will let us think more carefully about our master narratives of death and dying and what models of behavior are available to those who are terminally ill and those who care for them, and it can also offer insight into societal structures of health care. Such insights can further the cultural movement toward supporting a so-called good death, part of a larger shift from a biomedical model to a biocultural one that incorporates a patient’s subjective experience. Recognizing these signals can help a dying person and her caregivers think through treatment options, social support, and other aspects of care. Truly hearing the stories told by people with terminal illness helps us create a better ethic of caregiving and a better dying for all of us.

This study investigated the relationship between life satisfaction and death concern in the elderly as a function of age, self-reported health status, and religious involvement in order to examine the concept of ego integrity as porposed by Erikson (1963). Eighty-one subjects were recruited from the Good Samaritan Retirement Village in Kissimmee, Florida, and were divided into two groups: (1) the younger-old group which consisted of 42 individuals between the ages of 65 and 75, and (2) the older-old group which consisted of 39 individuals over the age of 75 years old. All subjects were administered the Life Satisfaction Index A (Neugarten, Havighurst, & Tobin, 1961), the Death concern Scale (Dickstein, 1972), a self-reported health measure and religious involvement measure developed by the investigators. Two factors from the Death Concern Scale, the negative evaluation of the reality of Death and the conscious contemplation od death, were also examined in relation to life satisfaction, self-reported health staus, and religious involvement. The results obtained through Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients demonstrated significant inverse relationships between life satisfaction and death concern and between life satisfaction and the conscious contemplation of death for both the older-old and younger-old groups. Self-reported health status was also noted to be significantly related to lfe satisfaction and death concern for the younger-old group. analyses of t tests for independent groups yielded no significant differences on the six dependent measures between the two age groups. No significant sex differences were noted for either age group. The results support the concept of ego integrity indicating that those individuals who are more satisified with their lives also tend to be less concerned about death. The measures utilized in this study were noted to be reliable across age groups. It is suggested that future research examine differences between present and past life satisfaction in relation to death attitudes.

In this study, the experiences and perspectives of 10 bereaved mothers were investigated. The research was guided by a feminist and contextual perspective. A contextual theory of stress supports an examination of the perspectives of individuals in families regarding the impact of stressful circumstances. Individuals are assumed to be both active and responsive to the social system which includes individual, dyadic, familial, social, community, and cultural levels of analysis. A feminist perspective emphasizes reflexivity, collaboration, emotionality, and accessibility in the process of research and focuses attention to broader cultural ideologies which influence the lives of individuals. Women's lives carry with them the assumption of motherhood and the protection of children. When a young child dies, mothers find themselves in a marginalized social category / Ph. D.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of grief on teachers of the severely disabled. Specifically, four areas of inquiry were pursued: the pattern of grief reactions of teachers following the death of a student, the need for bereavement support services, the need for pre-service and/or in-service training, and the effect of student death on the professional and personal lives of the teachers. Research was conducted on one student death immediately after it occurred. Four retrospective cases were also completed in order to gain information on the long range effects of death on teachers. Data were collected through review of the extant literature, informal direct observations, open ended interviews and review of the written documents. Data revealed that there is a consistent pattern of grief reactions exhibited by teachers. All teachers interviewed expressed a need for improved bereavement support as well as a need for additional pre-service and/or in-service training in issues of death and dying. The degree to which student death constituted a stress factor in the teachers professional and personal lives appears to be dependent upon the amount of time and the type of activities which the teachers had shared with the decreased student. Data analysis provided information for making recommendations to school systems, teacher training institutions and teachers for improving the quantity and quality of bereavement support. / Ph. D.

Increasing rates of adolescent homicide, suicide, and AIDS have forced researchers to relinquish comforting beliefs about youth and vitality, and to accept the reality of adolescent death. Previous studies of bereavement have given precedence to parental and fraternal relations, and peers of deceased adolescents have gone largely unnoticed. What literature exists in the area of peer bereavement suggests that the process of mourning a peer closely parallels the process of mourning a sibling. The present study set forth to study empirically the cognitive, behavioral, and affective responses of adolescents to the death of a peer, and to determine possible mediators of bereavement reactions. Fifty undergraduates who had recently lost a peer (bereaved) and 52 controls (nonbereaved) were compared on a series of objective measures. Beliefs about the meaningfulness of the world, self-worth, and morality emerged as important variables in distinguishing between bereaved and nonbereaved samples. Further, satisfaction with an available social support network, and locus of control appeared as significant variables, accounting for differences in grief responses of the bereaved. Results are discussed within a developmental framework. / Master of Science

Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 1998.

Thesis ((M. A. (Clinical Psychology)) --University of Limpopo, 2017. / The study explored the psychological meaning of mourning rituals in Botlokwa community, Limpopo Province. The study focused on identifying and describing the types of mourning rituals observed and performed by the participants after the loss of a loved one. Furthermore the study explored the subjective meaning the participants attach to the mourning rituals so as to identify and articulate the psychological themes embedded in the mourning rituals. A total of ten participants (male = 5; females = 5; aged between 40 and 60) were selected using the purposive sampling method. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews. Thematic content analysis method was used to analyse the data. The three major themes that emerged during data analysis were; a) The types of mourning rituals observed and performed after the death of a loved one; b) the subjective meaning that the bereaved attach to the mourning rituals and c) the psychological meaning embedded in the mourning rituals observed and performed after the death of a loved one. The findings of the study suggest that the mourning rituals performed by the Batlokwa people have significant psychological meanings. These include assisting the bereaved to cope with the death of a loved one, strengthening the bereaved and ensuring that the bereaved are healed and accept the death of a loved one. The study results further shows the different subjective meanings that the bereaved attach to the mourning rituals performed. Furthermore the findings of the study suggest that the participants perform mourning rituals in order to prevent them from misfortunes, illnesses, bad luck and to remove what is perceived as a “dark cloud” hanging over them after the death of a loved one. The findings further suggest that the bereaved benefit psychologically from performing the mourning rituals. One of the benefits is having to let go of the deceased with the knowledge that their loved ones’ soul is resting in peace. The study is concluded by, among others, recommending that psychologists familiarise themselves with different cultural groups and different ways of grieving and mourning within different cultures in order to better understand patients’ different mourning processes. / NIHSS scholarship

The abstract is only available to students, faculty and staff at PSU

The central aim of this study was to explore the meaning of death as both a literal and an imaginative reality, and to elucidate the fundamental tensions between these meanings of death in modern existence. Recognition was given to the need for a poetic rather than a scientific approach to thanatology, and an epistemological foundation for a poetics of death was sought in the tradition of gnosis. Theoretically, the study was grounded in the analytical psychology of C.G. Jung. It was argued that despite Jung's erratic allegiance to a Cartesian ontology and epistemology, his approach to death was nevertheless fundamentally poetic. The poetic parameters of death and dying were explored in the context of Jung's understanding of the dialectical tension between the ego and the self, and it was concluded that while death represents an opening to the imaginative possibilities of existence, these potentialities can come to the fore only when there is a corresponding willingness to die. In these terms, it was concluded that the tension between life and death forms a pivotal dynamic of human existence. These considerations led to the Question of whether the poetic parameters of death and dying are applicable to the encounter with death as a concrete actuality. It was hypothesised that the approach of death would be met at two levels of reality, that of the ego and that of the self. The expectation was that while death would be seen as a literal ending from the perspective of the former, it may represent the fulfilment of Being from the viewpoint of the self. It was also assumed that the tension between these images of death would be mediated by way of archetypal symbols, which represent the bearers of gnosis in modern culture. To address these issues at an empirical level, a hermeneutically grounded thematic analysis of 108 dreams reported by dying persons was undertaken. Twenty initial themes emerged from the data. Each of these themes was in turn elucidated by way of Jung's method of amplification. This exercise yielded five concise themes, these being (a) death, (b) transformation, (c) the self (d) the Feminine, and (e) the Masculine. It was concluded that dreams manifesting during the dying process reveal a fundamental tension between literal and metaphoric possibilities of death. Dream symbols were also found to mediate between this tension, and to orchestrate the individuation process. It was concluded that in the context of dying, dreams may reflect and facilitate the emergence of a meaningful gnosis of death. The clinical implications of these findings were onsidered, and indications for further research were provided.

M.Cur. / The death of a child is like none other. The impact shakes the world of parents in its entire being. This research tells the story of parents' experience of the couple relationship after child bereavement. The objectives of the research are to: • explore and describe a parent's experience of the couple relationship after child bereavement; and • describe guidelines for the advanced psychiatric nurse practitioner to provide support to parents who have experienced child bereavement in order to promote their mental health through the mobilisation of resources. The paradigmatic perspective of this study is guided by the Theory for Health Promotion in Nursing (Rand Afrikaans University, Department of Nursing Science, 2002:2-8). The focus is on the whole person. A functional approach was followed based on Botes's model (Botes in Rand Afrikaans University: Department of Nursing, 2002:9-15) for nursing research. The researcher utilised a qualitative, descriptive, exploratory and contextual design (Mouton, 1996: 102). An authoethnographic strategy was implemented, & Bochner in Denzin & Lincoln, 2001:739, 747). In-depth, semi-structured, phenomenological interviews were held with parents meeting the sampling criteria. Consent for the research was obtained from the Rand Afrikaans University and informed consent was obtained from the parents volunteering to participate in the research.