Death Studies最新文献

While existing psychological frameworks and their accompanying measures focus on death as anxiety-inducing and debilitating, we highlight an overlooked perspective of death-that death can be a basis for living with more meaning and presence. The present research adapts and validates the Death Mindsets Measure (DMM), which assesses the mindset that "death-is-life-enhancing," for a Norwegian context. Firstly, we translated the DMM and consulted with Norwegian bereavement experts and bereaved Norwegians on items' clarity and relevance to cultural perspectives of death. Secondly, we validated the Norwegian DMM (NDMM) on a predominantly bereaved community sample of Norwegians (N = 241). Using structural equation modeling, we confirmed the hierarchical two-factor structure of our measure. The NDMM also demonstrated high internal consistency and discriminant validity with existing death anxiety and death attitudinal measures. Finally, our measure explained additional variance in psychological well-being beyond existing death anxiety and attitudinal measures.

This paper explores the experiences of people who blog about their own terminal illness and dying through the lens of anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is a concept which is frequently applied to those people who will be bereaved by death, rather than those who are themselves dying. Ethnographic content analysis of terminal illness blogs of two Australian women clearly narrate experiences of loss and grief which can be understood through the frame of anticipatory grief. Yet they also document positive experiences of growth and connection which can be conceptualized as resilience rather than a demonstration of denial of death.

Suicide attempts and school violence, including gun violence, are now leading causes of death in youth 12-17. This study applied a latent class analytic approach to investigate how heterogenous subgroups of youth differed regarding patterns of violence engagement and suicide risk behavior and how geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic predictors related to subgroup membership. Data were drawn from the youth subsample of the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (N = 10,743). A suicide risk subgroup had low probabilities of violence engagement but high probabilities of suicide ideation and plan. A violence + suicide risk subgroup had high probabilities of violence engagement, suicide ideation, and suicide plan. A violence risk subgroup had high probabilities of violence engagement and carrying a handgun, but low probabilities of suicide ideation or plan. The largest subgroup had low probabilities across all class indicators. Demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic variables uniquely predicted subgroup membership.

Bereavement care in Europe varies in quality and availability. Through greater collaboration across Europe, there could potentially be an opportunity to improve care. This article discusses the inaugural European Grief Conference held in Denmark in 2022: "Bereavement and Grief in Europe - Emerging Perspectives & Collaborations". The conference was structured around a 4-tiered public health model of bereavement care needs. It included practice, research, policy, and educational perspectives. A total of 250 people from 27 different countries participated. To determine if the conference had appealed to a broad European audience of grief professionals and to assess how the conference was received by participants, we examined registration/submission data, the results of a one-word real-time feedback exercise, and the answers to an online satisfaction survey. The results indicated wide interest in greater information sharing and collaboration across Europe among bereavement care, research, and education professionals.

Serving as a family caregiver for, and ultimately losing, a parent with advanced cancer in emerging and young adulthood has substantial, life phase-specific implications for psychosocial development. This qualitative study characterizes domains of psychosocial development impacted by cancer caregiving and parental death in this life phase. As part of a larger study, 33 bereaved emerging/young adult caregivers of parents who died following advanced cancer completed semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis leveraging the constant comparative method was conducted by two coders and generated three themes, which described impacts of caregiving on: identity, life path, and relational intimacy and roles. Analyses also defined specific outcomes within these domains. Findings suggest that cancer caregiving-loss experiences can greatly influence developmental pursuits in this life phase. Findings validate a range of possible psychosocial impacts these caregivers may experience and can guide development of supportive resources for this growing subgroup of bereaved family caregivers.

This retrospective qualitative study aimed to examine the influences of bereaved family caregivers' perception of good death for their dying spouse or parent on their caregiving experiences. A purposive sample of 15 participants were recruited from a hospice and their narratives were analyzed. Using the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, five key components of a perceived good death that intermixed well-established Western attributes with deeply rooted Asian values were identified and meanings ascribed to their caregiving experiences were based on that. These findings suggested implications for practice on the entire service continuum from palliative and end-of-life care to bereavement services.

The sinking of the South Korean ferry Sewol in April 2014 claimed a total of 304 lives. Among the victims were 250 students from Dan-won High School in the city of Ansan and 11 of their teachers. For the residents of Ansan, the tragedy marked the beginning of widespread psychological distress and overwhelming grief. Exploiting the disaster's quasi-experimental nature, we employ a difference-in-differences (DID) strategy to measure its impact on the academic performance of Ansan's high school students in 5 major subjects. Using peers from Ansan's neighboring cities as the control group, our results reveal that the disaster impaired performances particularly in mathematics and natural science, a finding that is more pronounced for female students. Our results highlight that it is of uttermost importance to provide comprehensive psychological support and interventions to traumatized students but also to the communities they live in to minimize adverse effects on educational attainment.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a widespread impact on millions of individuals. Many turned to social media as an outlet for sharing personal experiences, such as the impact of the pandemic on suicidality. The purpose of this study was to understand the pandemic's impact on individuals who discuss their suicidality on social media. Keywords were used to search for discussion threads (N = 118) related to the pandemic on an online pro-choice for suicide forum. Using reflexive thematic analysis, six themes related to the pandemic's impact on mental health, suicidality, living conditions, and optimism were identified. Examination of the content from pro-choice for suicide forums may yield authentic information on the impact of the pandemic on those considering suicide. This study contributes to our understanding of the nuances of factors impacting mental health and suicidality during the pandemic, including unique risk and protective factors.

Sense making is especially common in bereavement when a death challenges an individual's existing worldview. Thus, it is often discussed in the context of statistically atypical deaths, such as the death of a child or death by suicide, that are apt to create a crisis of meaning. Less understood is the process of sense making following more statistically normative deaths, such as those that occur in old age following prolonged illness. In this descriptive phenomenological study, researchers analyzed qualitative interviews and digital narratives created by six individuals who had experienced the death of an older family member with dementia, seeking to identify the essential nature of sense making during bereavement following so-called "normal" losses. Three themes (memorializing the whole person, reflecting on the caregiving experience, and emotional sense making) were identified, shedding light on this specific meaning making process among individuals representing a large and growing segment of the population.

Meaning reconstruction is a central process in bereavement adaptation. However, clinical measures or means for identifying individuals whose struggles with meaning making have become dysfunctional have yet to be developed for clinicians to readily use in practice. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic effectiveness of the Integration of Stressful Life Experiences Scale-Short Form (ISLES-SF) for measuring clinically significant struggles with meaning making of loss. The results of this study of 118 bereaved adults support the diagnostic use of the ISLES-SF (sensitivity of 83% and specificity of 73%), as well as an identified cut-score (≥ 14) that researchers and clinicians can employ to accurately and efficiently identify those whose difficulties with making meaning of loss have become debilitating. The results also showed that those who scored in the clinical range of the ISLES-SF displayed higher levels of anxiety, depression and prolonged grief than those not struggling with meaning making.