Week 8: Individual Responses To Dying And Death Flashcards
Factors Influencing Childhood Grief
-Personality
-Family dynamics
-Prior experiences of loss
-Type of loss
-Relationship to the deceased
-Overall health and wellness
-Social context
-Development stage
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
Non-corporeal continuation
connection to the deceased continues after death
Magical Thinking
belief that your thoughts/behaviour can influence reality. Can lead to feelings of guilt, responsibility for events out of their control.
Understanding Death at Different Life Stages/ Birth- 2 years
Feelings of pain, anger, sadness due to separation from people they are attached to.
Understanding Death at Different Life Stages/ 3-5 years
‘Magical thinking’. Death not understood as final, universal, irreversible.
Understanding Death at Different Life Stages/ 5-10 years
Greater understanding of biological and universal reality of death
Understanding Death at Different Life Stages/ 10- 16 years
Awareness of biological reality of death and understanding of the symbolic, cultural meanings attached to death and dying.
The Private Worlds of Dying Children 1980
-Studied children, ages 3-9, and their experiences of dying of leukemia.
-Through parents, doctors attempted to shield children from their terminal diagnosis, children were aware, sought to hide their awareness from their parents.
-‘Drama of mutual pretence’
Talking with Children About Death
-Children often excluded from conversations about death, exposure to the reality of life.
-Can lead to death anxiety
-Movement to educate children about death.
-Arnold (2017): avoid euphemisms, as these can create confusion, increase likelihood of magical thinking. Factual statements are preferred.
Dying Trajectories
-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 fear death so much as fear dying
-fear of being a burden with a long dying trajectory, fear of suffering, fear of loss.
Closed awareness
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.
