Tears in the Cloud: Facing Serious Illness and Grief in the Digital Age (FR476)

Abstract

•Compare and contrast traditional models of communicating about the personal experience of serious illness and grief.•Describe the emergence of autopathography as a therapeutic tool for patients and clinicians.•Identify unique aspects of technology-based grieving and "processing" serious illness. As social media becomes increasingly pervasive, persons with serious illness or who have experienced loss increasingly utilize various social media platforms to share information and to "process" the experience. This session will contextualize this use of social media as the natural evolution of expressing one's experience of serious illness and/or grief as new communication technologies have emerged. Specific examples will included from YouTube, Facebook, and CaringBridge. Various literary approaches to exploring and sharing the experience of serious illness and grief will be explored, including academic work, general review, and first-person narrative ("pathography"). Web-based resources will be provided for individuals facing serious illness, persons wishing to support them, and clinicians.