Week 11

Question 1

What is spirituality?

Answer 1

A subjective experience that exists both inside and outside traditional religions

Question 2

What are some benefits of a religious or spiritual focus for mental health?

Answer 2

(Swinton & Gibson, 2017)
1. Extended life expectancy
2. Lower Blood Pressure
3. Lower rates of death from coronary artery disease
4. reduced mortality after cardiac surgery
5. reduced levels of pain in cancer sufferers

Question 3

What is Grief?

Answer 3

A psycho-spiritual crises

A behavioural, cognitive and emotional response to significant loss

Question 4

What is Freud’s (1915) theory of Mourning & Melancholia?

Answer 4

The theory states that we develop attachments by linking our ego to the object. There when the object leaves our life, we experience the potential loss of out ego/self

Question 5

What are the four tasks of mourning identified by Worden?

Answer 5

1. Accept Reality of Loss
2. Process pain of grief - attempts to avoid and lessen leads to prolonging/complicating grief
3. Adjust to world without deceased person
4. Find enduring connecting with decreased in midst of embarking on new life

Question 5

What is Prolonged Grief Disoder?

Answer 5

DSM-5 - a prolonged maladaptive grief reaction that can be diagnosed, only after at least 12 months have elapsed since the death of someone with whom the bereaved had a close relationship

Characterised by:
- intense yearning
- longing for the deceased person (intense sorrow, frequent crying)
- preoccupation with thoughts or memories of deceased
- co-occurence with e.g. emotional numbness, sense of disbelief, loneliness, PTSD

*Distinct form depression because death & deceased person form the focus of thoughts and feelings rather than general low mood