In this Practice Inquiry, Mexican American parents' perceptions of cultural influences on grieving the death of their child were described. Findings were used to inform a continuing education module for nurses involved in the care of Mexican American parents who have experienced the death of their child. This line of inquiry is important as the needs of grieving Mexican American parents are not always recognized by those providing care. Ethnographic methodology was used to explore the narratives of three Mexican American fathers and three Mexican American mothers who had experienced the death of their child. A purposive sample was recruited from a faith based community health center in Tucson, AZ. In depth interviews were conducted primarily in the participants' homes by the researcher. All interviews were conducted in Spanish language. Data sources included participant interviews, participant observation, field notes and measures for demographic data and acculturation (ARSMA-II).The overarching cultural theme that represents the participants' perspectives is El Dolor de los Padres: Pain in the Parent. The three major themes that support the overarching cultural theme include: (a) Enduring Great Pain, (b) Voices of Mexican American Parents, and (c) Cultural Death Traditions. The fourth major theme, Going Forward: For the Provider specifically addresses data gathered to educate nurses for supporting Mexican American parents grieving the death of a child. The findings of the study are interpreted within the context of the Mexican cultural concepts of familismo, machismo, marianismo, fatalismo, spiritualidad, respeto, confianza and personalismo and the concept of vulnerability.The study's significance for the practice of nursing is upheld in the findings that are specific to understanding and preventing disparities in the care of Mexican American parents who have experienced the death of a child. Increasing nursing knowledge of the cultural context of grieving, especially spiritualidad and continuing memories, offering culturally competent nursing interventions at this time of deep emotional pain are elucidated in this Practice Inquiry.

How do we mourn the dead and proceed with our lives when the dead do not absent themselves from our everyday world, but remain integrated into our community of friends on social networking sites? This paper explores the changes occurring in the ways in which we experience online the deaths of our loved ones, namely, a collapse between public and private modes of grief. The changes under examination include the changing perception of death, identity creation and ownership, the role of the bereaved, theoretical/therapeutic approaches to grieving, the function of ritual, and commemoration of the dead. Questions this paper addresses include: to whom do the dead belong? Does death become banal when it is incorporated into everyday life? How can a ritual reflect a passage from one state of being to another when you are part of a system that does not recognize a change in status? / text

Bakgrund: Suicid är ett folkhälsoproblem och i Sverige suiciderar cirka 1400 människor varje år. Sorgen efter en närståendes suicid leder till en kris och ett lidande för de anhöriga. Sjuksköterskans roll i den vårdande relationen blir att bekräfta dessa känslor och upplevelser hos den anhöriga. Syfte: Beskriva anhörigas upplevelser om hur lidandet kan lindras i sorgen efter en närståendes suicid. Metod: Studien är en kvalitativ analys av berättelser där tre självbiografier, tre antologier samt en rapport analyserades utifrån ett omvårdnadsperspektiv. Resultat: Resultatet visade tre kategorier med utgångspunkt från att lindra de anhörigas lidande. Att ta avsked av den döde visade sig vara viktigt i sorgeprocessen men att ändå vara lyhörd för individens val var viktigt. De anhöriga upplevde en unik känsla i sorgen efter en närståendes suicid och hade ett stort behov av att bli bekräftade i detta från omgivningen. Till sist hade de anhöriga skiftande behov av stöd i att leva vidare som kunde innefatta både läkemedelsbehandling, samtalsstöd och hjälp i det vardagliga. Slutsats: Genom resultatet kan studien belysa sjuksköterskans roll i den vårdande relationen som är att se och bekräfta de anhöriga som unika individer och fungera som koordinator gentemot den anhöriga med övriga hälso- och sjukvården. / Background: Suicide is a public health problem and each year about 1,400 people commit suicide in Sweden. The grief after a loved one's suicide leads to a crisis and suffering of the survivors. The nurse's role in the caring relationship is to confirm the survivor’s feelings and experiences. Purpose: Describe suicide survivors’ experiences of how suffering can be alleviated after a loved one's suicide. Method: The study is a qualitative analysis of three autobiographies, three anthologies and a report, which were analyzed from a nursing perspective. Results: The result showed that saying goodbye to the deceased was important in the grieving process but also sensitivity to each survivor’s choice was paramount. Survivors experienced a unique feeling of grief after a loved one’s suicide and had a great need to be confirmed in this. Finally, the survivors had varying needs of support in order to continue living, which could include medical treatment, counseling or assistance in the everyday life. Conclusion: The results highlight the nurse's role in the caring relationship where acknowledging the survivors as unique individuals and coordinating their needs where among the nurse’s main tasks.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional Planning / Anne Beamish / Death and loss are natural processes of life, but even so, that does not make them any easier to cope with. For children who may not understand loss, adjusting to life after it can become a nearly impossible feat. Children’s reactions to loss and the grief often include anger, anxiety, confusion, fear, sadness, shock, guilt, and regret (Murthy & Smith, 2005). Nature and art have been used as healing methods in the past, but rarely in schools. Because children spend much of their day at school, outdoor landscapes could be designed to that help alleviate children’s grief and commemorate their memories. This master’s project proposes a set of guidelines and a palette of elements that can be used to create landscapes for grieving in elementary schools. To define these guidelines I combined stages of grieving from two different psychological models with design elements that could help children at each stage of their grief. These guidelines and elements were then tested by applying them at three different elementary schools in Manhattan, Kansas: Marlatt Elementary, Northview Elementary, and Theodore Roosevelt Elementary. The designs at the three elementary schools help illustrate the flexibility of the guidelines and palette of design elements. Not only can the selected elements vary, but the sites can range in size and location. The palette of elements will enable schools to implement landscapes for grieving in a range of places and conditions.

Title: Bereavement in people with developmental disabilities Author: Kristýna Štaffová Department: Department of Special Education Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Jan Šiška, Ph.D. Abstract This thesis is devoted to the topic of mourning of people with developmental disabilities. In this paper we focus on the positive influence of the grieving process before it starts, that means, how can we inform an individual with developmental disabilities in a sensitive way about an illness or a death of his beloved. In the introduction we describe bases which are characteristic for people with developmental disabilities and which are useful to consider when communicating bad news. Subsequent chapters are devoted to describing the preparation and process of telling bad news to people with developmental disabilities. The thesis is supplemented by practical examples for better representation of the discussed topic. The conclusion is dedicated to description of the grieving process of 3 persons with developmental disabilities. Key Words person with developmental disabilities, dying, death, grieving, grief, grieving process, bereavement, loss, bad news

The aim of this study has been to investigate how the death of a close relative is described in pictures and texts through the eyes of a child character in three picture books. The analysis has also considered how the child character copes with the tragedy and how he or she finds support in the grief process. The books analysed here are Resan till Ugri-La-Brek (1987), Farväl, Rune (1986), and Jättebra Olga! (2010). Since these are works of fiction, this study does not assume that they are an accurate reflection of reality, but the way the child characters act and cope with their grief has been compared with the findings of empirical research on how children react in real situations. The material has been examined by means of a qualitative literary analysis comparing the books according to the research questions. The study finds that the child characters receive evasive explanations from people around them concerning what death means, for instance that the person is sleeping. A common reaction among the children is to deny what has happened. To find the way out of the grief, the child characters begin by looking for answers to their questions about death, and by thinking of memories of the dead person. According to empirical research, abstract explanations of death should be avoided for children in grief, since this can cause confusion. Everyone will be affected by grief some time during life, and children can ask questions about this uncertain subject. Another aim here has therefore been to consider any possible benefits the books may have for practical application in the classroom when discussing these matters.

The speaker of The Desert Survival Guide is seeking to reconcile his own disconnection, from the natural world, the cosmos, his family, and from his sense of his own humanity. The poems in The Desert Survival Guide are a healing ceremony, to come to a place of acceptance regarding the loss of my father. The semi-autobiographical speaker of these poems has lost the immediate physical presence of his father in his life but still retains a deep memory imprint of the father and an unresolved need to process the absence of the father. He is gradually establishing a new connection to the land on which his father lived out his life and was buried. Impressions of his father bloom out from the geologic features of the landscape, the natural flora and fauna, all a realm of immediate waking dream. The speaker is something of an Orphean Shaman; he wanders the landscape howling his pain and loss, his love, his passions, as Orpheus did his songs. He seeks to pierce through the veil of death in order to reconcile the loss of his loved ones; he seeks to go beyond the human created world into the mystic experience of the desert through the power of utterance and by honoring virile animal familiars. He journey’s to the beyond, for much the same purposes as the shaman, a purpose common to poets, mystics, and scientists, to see beyond immediate knowing. He follows the most primal of human directives, the need to understand and communicate the experiences of his life which have struck him with great intensity.

Tidigare forskning visar att barn, efter förlusten av en förälder, mår bra av att komma tillbaka till rutinerna i förskolan, där barnet hela tiden ges möjlighet till lek, något som är en central del i barnets bearbetning av sorgen.Vårt syfte med studien är att ta reda på hur förskolan uppfattar att de arbetar med och stödjer, samt tror att de skulle arbeta och stödja, barn som förlorat en förälder. Vi vill även ta reda på vilken hjälp de kan ta in om pedagogernas stöd och kunskap inte räcker till. Slutligen vill vi se om det finns handlingsplaner för situationer som dessa i förskolorna.I studien använde vi oss av empiriska undersökningar i form av informella intervjuer. Urvalet bestod av fem pedagoger på olika förskolor i en kommun. Tre av dessa pedagoger har, i sitt arbete, mött ett barn som förlorat en förälder.Resultatet visar på att pedagoger anser att leken är en viktig del i barns bearbetning, men att det måste vara barnet som tar initiativet till denna lek och även till samtal kring förlusten. Resultatet visar även på att alla pedagoger ställde sig positiva till att ta in extern hjälp till barnet, men att kunskapen om vart man kan få denna hjälp ifrån inte var tillräcklig. Inte alla förskolor i studien har handlingsplaner för hur de skall gå tillväga om ett barn mister en förälder. / Previous research shows that, after the loss of a parent, the child’s wellbeing is enchanced if the child gets back to pre-school, where the children all the time are given the opportunity to play, which is a central part of the child's processing of grief.Our purpose of this study is to find out how the pre-school perceive the way they work and support, and how they think they would work and support, children who has lost a parent. We also want to find out what help they can bring in when the teachers’ support and knowledge is not enough. And finally we want to see if there are plans for situations like these in pre-schools.In this study, we used empirical research in the form of informal interviews. We randomly selected five teachers in different pre-schools in the municipality. Three of these teachers have worked with a child who has lost a parent.The results show that teachers believe playing is an important part of a child’s grief process, but it must be the child who takes the initiative to play and also to talk about their loss. The results also shows that all the teachers were positive of bringing in outside help for the child, but that the knowledge of where to get this help from was not sufficient. Not all pre-schools in the study have plans for how to proceed if a child loses a parent.

Notre recherche aborde le processus de pardon comme travail d’élaboration du mal souffert et comme mouvement existentiel, dans une approche phénoménologique-existentielle complémentaire aux études nord-américaines qui se développent depuis une vingtaine d’années dans le champ de la psychologie du pardon. En partant de la question « Comment le pardon peut-il guérir ? » nous décrivons le pardon comme mouvement de déliement du mal souffert. Le travail d’élaboration psychique sous-tendant un processus de pardon est analysé à travers deux questions : (1) « Que faire du mal que l’on m’a fait ? », (2) « Comment faire du passé ‘ce qui passe’ » ? Nous éclairons la dimension intérieure du travail de pardon en montrant que le déliement se joue dans une dialectique subtile entre mémoire du malheur et intégration de ce malheur à l’existence. La recension de la littérature psychologique et l’analyse de la notion d’étape dans un processus de pardon ouvrent sur une présentation de la filiation occidentale de la notion de pardon dans le legs narratif biblique, avant une mise en perspective des dialogues entre Jankélévitch, Derrida, Arendt et Ricoeur. Une étude qualitative basée sur trois cas cliniques permet d’approfondir la nature de la blessure, les réactions à l’événement blessant et la mise en sens du pardon. Une analyse phénoménologique interprétative précise certaines dimensions subjectives et existentielles autour de trois axes : (1) l’impardonnable, (2) le pardon unilatéral et le pardon à soi-même, (3) le pardon réciproque. L’abord d‘une oeuvre de Rembrandt met en évidence la fécondité de l’art pour éclairer sous de nouveaux angles la clinique du pardon. Notre étude suggère également des pistes d’accompagnement thérapeutique du travail de pardon dans une perspective phénoménologique-existentielle. / .../...

The goal of the study was to explore the needs of widowed parents in assisting their children in the grieving process. The researcher chose this specific research topic for a number reasons, primarily based on her own observations and contact of her external world as the researcher had either come into direct contact with, or become aware of families in her community where one of the parents in families with children in early and/or middle childhood had passed away. Loosing a parent through death is a very traumatic experience for a child. How the child reacts to and deals with this trauma in the long-term, is greatly influenced by how the remaining parent reacts to and deals with the death him or herself, as well how he or she assists the child in the grieving process. Secondly, the research topic fits within the social work context as bereaved families may turn to the social work profession for guidance and assistance in understanding and resolving their loss. Therefore, the researcher was of the opinion that it would be of value to gain knowledge of the specific needs of the widowed parents in helping their children during the grieving process in order to offer these families more direct, focused and valuable assistance. The researcher made use of a qualitative approach in order to explore and gain an understanding of the needs of widowed parents' experiences in assisting their children in the grieving process. The researcher used applied research for her study, as it was hoped that the information gained would provide further knowledge to help the social work profession in assisting widowed parents and their children in the grieving process. Seven respondents were identified and chosen primarily through a non-probability sampling technique of purposive sampling. As the initial number of respondents were limited, the researcher also made use of the snowball sampling technique to further increase her sample. Data for the study was gathered by means of semi-structured one-to-one interviews, with the use of an interview schedule in order to gain a detailed picture of the widowed parents' perceptions and experiences of helping their children come to terms with the death of their parents. In studying the literature the researcher focused on two main aspects. Firstly, the children's grieving process, including their understanding of death, reaction to the death of a parent, as well as the actual grieving process of parentally bereaved children. Secondly, the researcher focused on the needs of widowed parents in assisting their children in the grieving process, including the important role they play in this process, their own emotions, challenges they are faced with in this process, the impact the death has on the family's functioning in relation to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and finally the availability and use of support systems for widowed parents. The findings of the study showed that all the respondents were aware of the impact the death had on their children, especially as most of the deaths were sudden and unexpected. Many needs were experienced, including telling the children about the death, loneliness, and perhaps the most difficult of all, finding a balance between expressing their own grief so that their children felt free to grieve but at the same time not falling apart completely, thereby overwhelming their children. Overall the researcher found that it appeared more important to the widowed parents that their children's needs be taken care of above their own. In concluding the study the researcher was of the opinion that grieving the loss of a loved one involves much more than just a process of steps. It encompasses a wide range of tasks, emotions, thoughts and behaviours. Therefore, in terms of helping to meet the needs of widowed parents in assisting their children in the grieving process, one cannot just make assumptions and based on this follow a set formula. Families, with children in early and middle childhood, who have lost a parent through death, find themselves in a very vulnerable and fragile state. The way they deal with the loss and the support they are given both informal and formal, can have a very significant impact on the future functioning of the remaining family members both individually and as a whole. Therefore, it is imperative that those assisting the family through the loss have knowledge of their needs so that they can assist them in a way that can bring about healing and restoration. / Dissertation (MSD (Play Therapy))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Social Work and Criminology / MSD / unrestricted