Individual Responses to Dying and Death

Question 1

What are some factors that influence childhood grief?

Answer 1

• personality
• family dynamics
• prior experiences of loss
• type of loss (death or non-death)
• relationship to the deceased
• overall health and wellness
• social context
• developmental stage

Question 2

What are the key concepts of children & death?*

Answer 2

• universality: death is universal; all living things die; death is unpredictable, inevitable
• irreversibility: death is final and permanent
• non-functionality: death causes the body to cease to function
• causality: understanding that something has to precipitate death (accident, illness, injury)
• non-corporeal continuation: connection to the deceased continues after death
• magical thinking: belief that your thoughts/behaviours can influence reality. can lead to feelings of guilt, responsibility for events out of their control

Question 3

How do kids from birth to 2 interpret death?

Answer 3

• feelings of pain, anger, sadness due to separation from people they are attached to

Question 4

how do kids aged 3 - 5 interpret death?

Answer 4

• magical thinking
• death not understood as final, universal, irreversible

Question 5

how do kids aged 5 to 10 interpret death?

Answer 5

• greater understanding of biological and universal reality of death

Question 6

how do kids aged 10 to 16 interpret death?

Answer 6

• awareness of biological reality of death (bioscientific concepts)
• understanding of the symbolic, cultural, meanings attached to death and dying (non-corporeal continuation)

Question 7

What does the book ‘the private worlds of dying children’ discuss?

Answer 7

• studied children aged 3-9 and their experiences of dying of leukemia
• though parents, doctors attempted to shield children from their terminal diagnosis, children were aware, sought to hide their awareness from their parents
• drama of mutual pretense

Question 8

describe children and death conversations?

Answer 8

• children often excluded from conversations about death, exposure to the reality of death
• lead to death anxiety
• avoid euphemisms as these can create confusion, increase likelihood of magical thinking (factual statements are preferred)

Question 9

what are dying trajectories?

Answer 9

• death as an event, dying as a process
• dying trajectory: the course that a person follows over time as they move through the dying process to death
  may be slow or sudden
  people may not dear death as so much fear dying
• fear of being a burden with a long dying trajectory, fear of suffering and fear of loss

Question 10

What are the four awareness contexts?

Answer 10

• closed: a context in which the person who is dying does not realize they are dying, while family and caregivers may be aware. families sometimes wish to keep this information from the dying person for a variety of reasons
• suspected: a context in which the dying person may begin to suspect that they have not yet been provided with all of the relevant information about their situation
• mutual: a context in which relevant information is known by all parties, but not shared between them
• open: a context in which all parties are aware of the situation and are openly willing to discuss dying and death

Question 11

What are the five stages of Kubler-Ross’s stage based model on coping with dying?

Answer 11

1) denial
2) anger
3) bargaining
4) depression
5) acceptance

Question 12

What are the critiques of the ‘stages’ model?

Answer 12

• it is a generalization
• not a prescription for how everyone can/should cope with dying
• no real evidence to show people move through these stages
• coping is not linear
• does not give a sense of social context, norms of grief
• different people cope in different ways at different times and in different contexts

Question 13

What is death anxiety?

Answer 13

• human have the unique ability to be aware of their mortality
• this awareness causes anxiety, which provokes denial
• significant motivating factor in life
• need to seek meaning in life; death presents a challenge to meaning

Question 14

what is terror management theory (TMT)?

Answer 14

• the primary motivator of human action and accomplishment is to manage the terror provoked by awareness of death
• strategies used to find meaning, cope with death change across the life course
• older adults report less fear of death than younger adults
• avoid thoughts of death, mortality
• embrace cultural worldviews to achieve symbolic immortality
• generativity: sense of contributing to future generations

Question 15

what are some defense mechanisms of TMT?

Answer 15

• proximal = avoid thoughts of death or see mortality as a problem for later
• distal = embrace cultural worldviews in order to reinforce self-esteem and assuage terror caused by awareness of mortality. (religious beliefs, cultural norms related to achievement, leave a legacy)
• function to help you feel that life has meaning, you are important you will not be forgotten