Grief Flashcards
psychology
the scientific study of human behavior
psyche
mind
-logy
study of
funeral service psychology
the study of human behavior as related to funeral service
mourning
“the process” - an adjustment process which involves grief and/or sorrow over a period of time and helps in the reorganization of the life of an individual following a loss or death of someone loved.
grief
“the emotion” - an emotion or set of emotions due to a loss
bereavement
“the event” - the experience of the emotion of grief….a state of deprivation of something valuable.
thanatology
the study of death
thanos
death
phobia
fear
thanatophopbia
an irrational, exaggerated fear of death
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
physician worked with hospice patients; identified “five stages” a terminally ill person and the family experiences; she wrote “On Death and Dying”
Five Stages of Death & Dying
- denial & isolation
- anger
- bargaining
- depression
- acceptance
Erich Lindemann
- chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1944
- worked with families who lost loved ones in the Coconut Grove fire
- first professional to describe “anticipatory grief”
- wrote “Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief”
- introduced the “Grief Syndrome”
Grief Syndrome
- somatic or bodily distress of some type
- preoccupation with the image of the deceased
- guilt relating to the deceased or circumstances of the death
- hostile reactions
- inability to function as before the loss
- may develop traits of the behavior of the deceased
John Bowlby
a British psychiatrist who devoted much of his professional career to understanding attachment - what it is and how it develops; noted for the “Attachment Theory”
Attachment Theory
attachements come from a need for security and safety; situations that endanger the bond of attachment give rise to emotional reactions; the greater the potential for loss, the more intense the reaction
Sigmund Freud
- wrote the paper “Mourning and Melancholia” in 1917 in which he pointed out that depression, which he called “melancholia,” was a pathological form of normal grief
- he came up with the concept of “grief work” which implies that the mourner needs to take action
C.M. Parkes Phases of Mourning
- period of numbness
- phase of yearning
- phase of disorganization and despair
- phase of reorganized behavior
J. William Worden
- a psychiatrist who wrote “Grief Counseling & Grief Therapy
- participated in the “Harvard Bereavement Study” which indicated the mourning is necessary for all who have experienced loss through death.
- identified the “Four Tasks of Mourning”
Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning
- to accept the reality of the loss
- to work through the pain of grief
- to adjust to an environment in which the deceased is missing
- to emotionally relocate the deceased and move on with life
normal grief
uncomplicated grief
manifestations of normal grief
behaviors, feelings, physical sensations, cognitions
abnormal (complicated, unresolved) grief
grief extending over a long period of time without resolution