Psychosocial - loss and coping Flashcards
State some common responses to loss
- Tightness of chest, breathless, muscle weakness
- Lack of energy, fatigue, difficulty concentration
What is grief?
Normal process of reacting to loss
No set pattern but complicated
- Minimal – absence of grief
- Chronic – prolonged grieving
Whats bereavement?
Period of sadness after losing a loved one
Relate to loss of function or injury
What did Freud theories about loss and coping?
pathological morning and melancholia – hyper remembering comparing memories with reality
What did lindemann theories about loss and coping?
- Acute grief
- 490 killed in Cocoanut Grove Fire capture symptoms
- somatic distress (physical) and emotional (grief, hostility, loss of pattern of conduct and adopting training of the deceased)
- stages of grief work – emancipation from bondage of deceased, adjust to new environment, form new relationships
What did Hubler-Ross theories about loss and coping?
- Stages of grief
- Very widely accepted and applied
- Denial, angry, bargaining, depression and acceptance –
- however very linier
- everyone’s same trajectory
What did Bowlby theories about loss and coping?
- Attachment and loss –
- lasting physiological connectedness between human beings
- grief normal affective response when bond breaks
Phases
1. shock and numbness **
2. yearning and searching
3. despair and disorganisation
4. reorganisation and recovery **
What did Klass, silverman and nickman theories about loss and coping?
- Continuing bonds theory
- Challenging belief that holding on is pathological
- Continuing bond can be normal, adaptive and comforting
- Constructing new relationships
- Learning to have relationship with someone whose no longer there
*
What model did Stroaede and schut make for loss and coping?
- Dual process model
- Oscillation between loss orientation and attending to life changes – restoration orientation
- Dynamic process where loss and emotions are revisited
- Recognise importance of finding meaning
- Each individual is unique
- Takes account of effect of cultural and religious beliefs
What are some limitations of loss and coping models?
- Not a linear process
- Stages may repeat
- One size doesn’t fit all
- Assumption there’s one desired outcome and decathexis is central to the process
- Importance of finding meaning – Kesslers 6th of Hubler-ross – moving forwards in way that hours loved ones – e.g. Cancer walks and dedications
What is coping?
Stressful situations trigger cognitive appraisals – Cohen and Lazarus
Dynamic process by which people try to manage the perceived discrepancy between demands and resources – Lazarus and Folkman
What model did Lazarus and Folkman theorie?
**Transactional model of stress and coping
**1. Stressors internal or external demands
2. Appraisals
3. Primary (coping resources personal attributes and stable environment attributes) or secondary (coping responses – emotion and problem focus coping)
4. Short term outcomes – relaxation and mood
5. Long term outcomes – physical and mental health and life satisfaction
What did Shontz theories?
**Coping with a diagnosis
**1. Shock – emergency response - detachment
2. Encounter – disordered thinking, loss and grief, helplessness, despair
3. Retreat – avoidance and denial
What are some coping strategies?
- **Appraisal focused coping **– logical analysis, cognitive redefinition
- Problem focused – information gathering and problem solving
- Emtion-focused– regulation of emotions, venting and resigned acceptance
What theory did Miller make?
**Monitoring vs blunting
**- Monitoring – information seeking and adaptive (high locus of control)
- Blunting – avoid, shield, useful in uncontrollable situations (trust professionals and don’t ask for all information)
Role of personality – stable individual differences in inclination to employ a monitoring or blunting style
