Unit 16 Flashcards
Thanatology
Study of death, dying, grief, bereavement, and social attitudes toward these issues.
Clinical Death
Lack of heartbeat and respiration.
Whole-Brain Death
Declared only when the deceased meets eight criteria, which were established in 1981.
Persistent Vegetative State
Situation in which a person’s cortical functioning ceases while brainstem activity continues.
Bioethics
Study of the interface between human values and technological advances in health and life sciences.
Euthanasia
Practice of ending life for reasons of mercy.
Physician-Assisted Suicide
Process in which physicians provide dying patients with a fatal dose of medication that the patient self-administers.
Death Anxiety
Feeling of anxiety or even fear of death and dying.
Terror Management Theory
Theory that addresses the issue of why people engage in certain behaviors to achieve particular psychological states based on their deeply rooted concerns about mortality.
End-of-Life Issues
Issues pertaining to management of the final phase of life, after-death disposition of the body and memorial services, and distribution of assets.
Final Scenario
Ways for people to make their choices known about how they do and do not want their lives to end.
Hospice
Approach to assisting dying people that emphasizes pain management, or palliative care, and death with dignity.
Living Will
Document in which a person states his or her wishes about life support and other treatments.
Healthcare Power of Attorney
Document in which an individual appoints someone to act as his or her agent for healthcare decisions.
Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Order
Medical order that means that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is not started should one’s heart and breathing stop.
Bereavement
State or condition caused by loss through death.
Grief
Sorrow, hurt, anger, guilt, confusion, and other feelings that arise after suffering a loss.
Mourning
Ways in which people express their grief.
Anticipatory Grief
Grief that is experienced during the period before an expected death occurs that supposedly serves to buffer the impact of the loss when it does come and to facilitate recovery.
Grief Work
Psychological side of coming to terms with bereavement.
Anniversary Reaction
Changes in behavior related to feelings of sadness on the anniversary date of a loss.
Four-Component Model
Model for understanding grief that is based on (1) the context of the loss, (2) continuation of subjective meaning associated with loss, (3) changing representations of the lost relationship over time, and (4) the role of coping and emotion-regulation processes.
Grief Work as Rumination Hypothesis
Approach that not only rejects the necessity of grief processing for recovery from loss but also views extensive grief processing as a form of rumination that may increase distress.
Dual Process Model (DPM)
View of coping with bereavement that integrates loss-oriented stressors and restoration-oriented stressors.
Model of Adaptive Grieving Dynamics (MAGD)
Model of grieving based on two sets of pairs of adaptive grieving dynamics: lamenting and heartening responses to grief; integrating and tempering responses to grief.
Lamenting
Experiencing and/or expressing grieving responses that are distressful, disheartening, and/or painful.
Heartening
Experiencing and/or expressing grieving responses that are gratifying, uplifting, and/or pleasurable.
Integrating
Assimilating internal and external changes catalyzed by a grief-inducing loss, and reconciling differences in past, present, and future realities in light of these changes.
Tempering
Avoiding chronic attempts to integrate changed realities impacted by a grief-inducing loss that overwhelm a griever’s and/or community’s resources and capacities to integrate such changes.
Ambiguous Loss
Situations of loss in which there is no resolution or closure to a loss.
Complicated Grief or Prolonged Grief Disorder
Expression of grief that is distinguished from depression and from normal grief in terms of separation distress and traumatic distress.
Separation Distress
Expression of complicated or prolonged grief disorder that include being preoccupied with the deceased to the point that it interferes with everyday functioning, having upsetting memories of the deceased, long and searching for the deceased, and feeling isolated following the loss.
Traumatic Distress
Expression of complicated or prolonged grief disorder that includes disbelief about the death; mistrusting others, feeling anger, and being detached from others as a result of the death; feeling shocked by the death; and experiencing the physical presence of the deceased.
