Personal Grief Research Articles

Indigenous Knowledge on the Management of Ungomwa among the Ndau of South-Eastern Zimbabwe

The article explores the indigenous Ndau people’s conceptualisation of ungomwa (infertility) and its management. More specifically, I investigated the Ndau beliefs and practices around ungomwa. I conducted a literature review, informal conversations and made observations for data collection. I delimited the study to causes of infertility among Ndau males, its detection, effects, and how it is managed within Ndau cosmology. The findings showed that, although beliefs on ungomwa were varied, it is an undesirable condition. It results in childlessness, which presents serious problems; victims suffer personal grief and frustration, social stigma, and ostracism. Using an indigenous knowledge perspective in a patriarchal Ndau community, I argue that men want to maintain their ego and masculine grandstanding in the community and usually blame women for the infertility. More important to note is that there are indigenous knowledge systems that can be employed to (mis)manage infertility if detected early at youth. If detected when a man is already in marriage, measures are put in place to ensure children are born in the family. I argue that ungomwa is a gendered, cultural, and psycho-social sexual reproductive health challenge that can be innovatively managed for human flourishing.

Sibling Bereavement Among Young Indian Adults.

This qualitative study explores the bereavement experiences of 12 surviving siblings in India, focusing on familial, societal, and cultural influences. Six themes emerged: "The Demanding Familial Role," "Isolation That Accompanies the Grief," "Damaging Impact of Society," "Positive Role of Friends and Family," "Support Systems," and "Continuing Bonds." Participants often felt the burden of supporting their parents, leading to personal grief suppression and isolation, exacerbated by societal stigmas. Conversely, empathetic friends, supportive extended family, and professional resources like therapy provided crucial coping mechanisms. Continuing bonds with the deceased offered comfort and connection. The study highlights the need for comprehensive support systems tailored to cultural and societal contexts. It emphasizes the importance of public awareness and education to foster a supportive response to bereavement. Further research with larger, more diverse samples is recommended.

Correlates of public stigma towards prolonged grief disorder

BackgroundPublic stigma for grief may reduce the social support provided to bereaved persons and increase bereavement-related distress. The general public reports more stigmatizing responses towards bereaved persons with prolonged grief disorder (PGD) than towards persons experiencing non-clinical grief. No studies to date have investigated whether personal characteristics of the general public relate to public stigma towards PGD. The present study examined whether participants’ socio-demographic characteristics and personal bereavement experiences are associated with stigmatizing responses towards PGD. MethodWe combined data of three previously published vignette experiments to conduct a secondary analysis. All studies presented members of the general public (N = 452) with a description of a male bereaved person with PGD symptoms and a PGD diagnosis. Participants rated three indicators of public stigma - negative attributes (competence, warmth), emotional reactions (fear, anger), and preferred social distance. First, we examined whether gender, age, and educational level related to public stigma towards PGD. Second, we examined the association of participants’ personal bereavement experiences with public stigma. ResultsRegression analyses demonstrated that participants’ socio-demographic characteristics explained a significant amount of variance for warmth (ΔR² = .03; p < .05) and anger (ΔR² = .05; p < .01): Male participants rated the person in the vignette as less warm (β = -.13, p < .05). Being older related to lower ratings of warmth (β = -.12, p < .05) and higher ratings of anger (β = .18, p < .01). Participants’ educational level was not associated with stigma. Participants’ bereavement experiences explained a significant amount of variance for preferred social distance (ΔR² = .11; p <. 05): Participants reporting higher personal grief severity preferred less social distance from a person with PGD (β = -.29, p < .05). A higher number of experienced losses, the recency of the bereavement, and the cause of death (natural vs. unnatural) did not relate to public stigma. ConclusionsMale and older persons are more likely to demonstrate public stigma towards PGD. Experiencing severe grief oneself is associated with less preferred social distance from a person with PGD. Anti-stigma interventions may advance the public's knowledge about grief and PGD and address specific target groups (men and older persons).

Intense impressions: Joseph R. Biden toward a 2020 national grief

By mid-May of 2020, the United States surpassed 100,000 lives lost to COVID-19. The nation was scrambling to make sense of the global pandemic amid the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Focusing on Biden’s pandemic-related speaking moments throughout the 2020 election, I attend to the way Biden lingers in the felt intensities of grief. With this, I illustrate how Biden’s articulations of grief rely on affective intensities which situate a personal grief in open relation to an invisible other, a reaching out, the towardness of which moves away from the particular and toward the singular collective—national grief. Utilizing affect theory, public feelings scholarship, and precedential expectations for presidential speech, I argue that Biden’s grief rhetoric, against the absence of any similar grief-related public address from Trump during this time, defines the emergence of an affective national body—a grieving public. This analysis weaves between notions of individual and collective loss and prompts wider questions of presidential responsibility in response to shared trauma.

Psychiatry Resident Physicians Experience Personal and Professional Grief, Burnout and Depression: Results From a National Survey.

Resident physicians experience personal and professional stressors throughout training. These experiences may increase levels of burnout, depression, and grief. Understanding how these stressors impact trainees is essential for improving wellbeing during residency. We examined the prevalence and associations between burnout, depression, and grief among a national sample of psychiatry resident physicians. A survey including validated scales for burnout (Modified Maslach Burnout Inventory-Health Services Survey [MBI]), depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 [PHQ-9]), and grief (Traumatic Grief Inventory Self Report [TGSIR]) was distributed to 296 psychiatry program directors in January 2023 for dispersal to their respective residents. Fifty-seven participants completed the survey out of 245 participants who opened and started the survey (23.3%). All participants were current psychiatry residents. MBI scores averaged 21.2 (SD 6.5, range 11-40); 11 participants reported high levels of burnout (scores >27; 19.3%). PHQ-9 scores averaged 3.42 (SD 3.0, range 0-14), with 8 responses meeting the criteria for moderate depressive symptoms (scores >10-14; 14.0%). Suicidal ideation was reported by 5 of 57 participants (8.7%). TGISR scores averaged 12.2 (SD 11, range 0-43); no participants met the criteria for pathologic grief. TGISR scores were correlated with MBI (r = .30; P = .02) and PHQ-9 scores (r = .53; P < .0001). MBI scores were also correlated with PHQ-9 scores (r = .54; P < .0001). Non-pathological grief was correlated with burnout and depression. 14% to 20% of psychiatry residents reported clinically significant levels of burnout and depression. Future studies should aim to further characterize burnout, depression, and grief in larger samples of trainees.

Ecological Grief Observed from a Distance

The paper discusses ecological grief as a particular affective phenomenon. First, it offers an overview of several philosophical accounts of grief, acknowledging the heterogeneity and complexity of the experience that responds to particular personal points of importance, concern and one’s identity; the loss triggering grief represents a blow to these. I then argue that ecological grief is equally varied and personal: responding to what the grieving person understands as a loss severe enough to present intelligibly a degradation of her life and the world, to their meaningfulness or even sustainability. More specifically, both personal and ecological grief may manifest in an eroded sense of the future as a space in which one would invest oneself with plans, projects, ideas, desires, and endeavours. On the other hand, personal grief is, in some cases, conceptualised as having embedded the inherent possibility to come to closure or “move on” (e.g., by marrying again), while with ecological grief, the intelligibility of overcoming (replacing) the loss may be, depending on its scale, severely limited. I argue that this erosion of the future need not take the shape of paralysing sadness but rather of a disruption of taking some options of projecting oneself into the future seriously or as real.

Healing Landscapes and Grieving Eco-Warriors: Climate Activism in Children’s Literature

AbstractChildren, we are told, are becoming more anxious. But what are they anxious about? Recent studies on “climate anxiety” suggest that the current climate crisis is at the top of children and young people’s concerns and is being expressed in the form of grief. This essay considers a growing body of climate fiction for children that links personal grief to planetary grief as a way of developing children’s ecological consciousness and putting them on the path towards climate activism. It examines Sarah Baughman’s The Light in the Lake (2019) while tracing the historical and literary roots of this trend in literature for the young. Drawing on research in the interdisciplinary field of ecopsychology, the author argues that children’s authors are increasingly drawing on tropes of ecological fiction in order to respond to the current climate crisis and offer young readers models of activism that will address this major global issue.

„Szegény Sándor! Szegény Sándor!” Petőfi emlékezete Arany János Emlények (1851–1855) című versciklusában

Petőfi not only became (remained) an extremely popular figure in the literary, journalistic, and critical discourses of the 1850s, but his figure and literary heritage – in addition to national pantheonization and widespread popularization – also became a competition for the appropriation of competing memory constructions and commemorative communities. The dilemma arises: how could personal grief be given a public voice in this communication dumping? Were the media, discursive and genre frameworks of the era at all suitable for the literary representation of the depths of grief? Or do media noise and public forms necessarily empty private dimensions? If we ask these questions, perhaps the seemingly suffocating atmosphere of Hungary in the middle of the 19th century does not seem so distant and foreign.

Stitchers of Instagram

Stitchers of Instagram

Grief in the practice of oncology: Prevalence and impact.

253 Background: Oncology providers regularly face death and serious illness while shepherding patients through the cancer journey. International research shows that oncologists frequently experience grief and that grief is linked to compassion fatigue. Providing care for patients with terminal cancer has been linked to burnout, but the relationship between grief and burnout has not been explored. We sought to describe the prevalence of grief in oncology providers in the US and its link to burnout. Methods: We surveyed 255 Duke oncology providers, including in the Duke Cancer Network. Our survey included demographics, two questions about burnout, and an adaptation of the Traumatic Grief Inventory. Results: We received 128 responses, with 50% response rate. Our sample included 26% attendings, 12% fellows, and 62% advanced practice providers, with 78% of providers from the academic setting and 22% from the community. Of 123 participants who completed the grief inventory, 92 (94%) endorsed feelings of grief in the past year. Approximately half of participants endorsed burnout, and they attributed an average of 30.6% of their burnout to grief. Oncologists with personal grief, in academic settings, and &lt;10 years in practice had higher grief scores trending toward statistical significance. Using logistic regression, we found that burden of grief predicted burnout in providers. For each increase in one point on the grief scale there was a 15% increase in odds of experiencing burnout (95% CI 7% - 22%). Conclusions: The prevalence of grief among US oncologists has not been studied. We found that the experience of professional grief is widespread among oncology providers, with 94% answering at least “sometimes” to any item on an adapted grief inventory. Moreover, we found grief to be an important predictor of burnout, suggesting a key opportunity for intervention in support of oncology providers. [Table: see text]

“They were here, and they still matter”: A qualitative study of bereaved parents legacy experiences and perceptions

Background: Legacy building interventions are used in pediatric healthcare settings to help families cope with difficult healthcare experiences and typically reserved for intentional use at or near the end of a child’s life. However, little is known about how bereaved families perceive the concept of legacy that these practices are meant to address. Emerging research challenges the view of legacy as a standardized, handheld keepsake item but rather as a summation of qualities and experiences that affect those left behind. Therefore, more research is needed. Aim: To explore the legacy perceptions and experiences of bereaved parents/caregivers in an effort to inform legacy-oriented interventions in pediatric palliative care. Design: In this qualitative, phenomenological study grounded in social constructionist epistemology, bereaved parent/caregivers completed a semi-structured interview about their legacy perceptions and experiences. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using an inductive, open coding approach grounded in psychological phenomenology. Setting/participants: Participants were parents/caregivers and one adult sibling of children (ages 6 months–18 years) that died between 2000 and 2018 at a children’s hospital in the Southeastern United States and spoke English as their primary language. Results: Sixteen parents/caregivers and one adult sibling were interviewed. Participants’ responses converged across three themes: (1) definitions of legacy, including traits and characteristics, impacts on others, and the child’s enduring presence; (2) manifestations of legacy, such as tangible items, experiences, traditions, and rituals, and altruism; and (3) factors perceived to affect legacy experiences, including characteristics of the child’s death and one’s personal grief process. Conclusion: Bereaved parents/caregivers define and experience their child’s legacy in ways and manifestations that conflict with current legacy building interventions used in pediatric healthcare settings. Thus, an immediate shift from standardized legacy-oriented care to individualized assessment and intervention is needed to provide high-quality patient- and family-centered pediatric palliative care.

Caregiver-child communication on parental loss in the context of the AIDS epidemic in Namibia

Personal grief takes place in a social context, such as the family setting. This study aimed to understand how Namibian caregivers and children/adolescents communicate parental loss, in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. An ethnographic design was used, in which 38 children, adolescents, and their caregivers were interviewed. The results show that caregivers shared few memories and provided minimal information about the deceased parents. However, the majority of adolescents and children wished for information. A relational Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver model was used to map the reasons for this silence. This model is useful for grief interventions that aim to strengthen communication.

Addressing resiliency and burnout: A quantitative needs assessment of oncology physician assistants (PAs).

11016 Background: Significant progress has been made in understanding the factors associated with oncology (onc) PA burnout. However, little is known about what PAs need to mitigate burnout, the availability of resources, and barriers to interventions. Methods: A national survey of onc PAs was conducted in 2022. PAs completed a quantitative needs assessment to determine the importance of and their perceived skills in topics of self-care, clinical care, and professional development. For importance, “high importance” included ratings of ‘Essential’ or ‘Very Important’; for perceived skill, “high skill” included ratings of ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’. Engagement with employee assistance programs (EAPs) was examined. Resiliency &amp; Burnout were assessed using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale &amp; the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Results: PAs (n = 171) were mostly practicing in medical oncology (66%) and outpatient (66%). The high importance topics most often identified were dealing with difficult patients (93%), dealing with difficult providers (89%), delivering bad news (88%) and coping with death / patient suffering and personal grief (86%). Topics less often reported as high importance included opportunities to be a mentor (61%), professional coaching (59%) and mindfulness skills (53%). PAs frequently reported high skills in dealing with difficult patients (75%), delivering bad news (72%), and resiliency skills (59%). Fewer PAs reported high skills for debriefing following significant events (49%) and mindfulness skills (42%). Burnout (BO) rates were higher for those with lower perceived skills in resiliency (p = 0.03) and dealing with difficult providers and staff (p = 0.03) but did not differ based on importance of any topics. Resiliency significantly increased with increasing levels of reported importance for the mindfulness skills training, cognitive skills training, and debriefing after significant events topics. Resiliency significantly increased with increased levels of perceived skill for all topics explored. Common barriers to well-being EAP participation were lack of time (58%) and concerns about confidentiality and stigma (26%). For PAs with concerns about stigma, resiliency scores were lower (6.4 vs 7.0; p &lt; 0.001) and BO rates were higher (73% vs 47%; p = 0.005). Conclusions: Perceived deficiencies in resiliency training and managing difficult work relationships correlate with higher rates of burnout in onc PAs. Barriers to participation in EAPs, which may help address these deficits, are common and when present are associated with an alarming rate of burnout and lower resiliency. Cultural change in medicine is needed to reduce perceived and experienced stigmatizing experiences to address burnout. These findings suggest that burnout interventions which focus on building resiliency and managing work relationships are crucial and may be best implemented outside of the workplace.

A deductive thematic analysis of nurses with job-related problems who completed suicide during the early COVID-19 pandemic: A preliminary report.

Prior to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, nurses died by suicide more frequently than the general population. Antecedents prior to death include known job problems, such as disciplinary action; diversion of medications; inability to work due to chronic pain; and physical and mental illness. The aim of this study was to explore the suicide experience of nurses who died with known job-related problems during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to what has been previously described. Deductive reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyze narratives of nurses with known job problems who died by suicide from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Violent Death Reporting System. Forty-three nurses with known job-related problems completed suicide between March and December 2020. Factors associated with death were similar to previous findings with notable exceptions, increased prevalence of suicidal ideation and post-traumatic stress prior to the event. Pandemic-specific issues were noted including reduction in hours, fear of disease transmission, civil unrest, and grief-related trauma. Suicide prevention programs need to address both institutional and individual factors associated with nurse suicide. As previously recommended, transitions into retirement and job loss are vulnerable times warranting psychological support. Further, strategies to reduce the impact of stressors and increase support for nurses are needed at the organizational level. A systems level approach to hardwire coping strategies is indicated pre-licensure and throughout nurses' careers. A new focus on how to process personal and professional grief is warranted. Resources are needed for nurses traumatized by life (rape, childhood trauma) or work-related experiences.

Irreconcilable Loss in Cristina Henríquez’sThe World in Half

The intellectual journey is destined to have a geographical itinerary. — Édouard Glissant (4) Nearly a year after my mother’s death, a friend sent me an article titled “My Mother’s Death Isn’t Something I Survived. It’s Something I’m Still Living through.” Writing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jenni Miller explains that grief is not linear and that the loss of her mother prepared her emotionally and mentally to survive the pandemic. Detailing nights with nothing to do except “lie sideways across [my] bed at 4 a.m. feeling desperately, bitterly lonely,” Miller suggests the value, if not inevitability, of dwelling in pain and discomfort. The exhortation to approach loss as complex and multifaceted should not be confused with the idea of loss as restorative or as one disconnected from other embodied experiences. As Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) scholars, activists, and public intellectuals point out, the COVID-19 pandemic has occurred alongside, and been exacerbated by, the ongoing pandemic of institutionalized racism in the United States and globally. BIPOC communities continue to confront COVID-19 alongside ongoing settler colonialism, state-backed xenophobia, and the disavowal of Black and brown dignity, whether that be on the US-Mexico border or the heavily policed streets of many US cities. At the same time, incidents such as the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent trial offered the opportunity to consider true accountability for some and was a call to “move on” for others.1 While Miller’s piece does not take up questions of racial justice, her accounting of her ongoing state of grief may resonate with individuals and communities confronting continuous loss. The ongoing twin pandemics of COVID-19 and institutionalized racism, moreover, make the idea of living with/in loss, and the differential impacts of race, gender, and nationality, particularly relevant. This exhortation to remain attuned to loss as an ongoing, potentially unresolvable process is central to Cristina Henríquez’s 2009 novel The World in Half. The COVID-19 pandemic has driven home the interrelatedness of personal and public grief, public health, and racial and economic disparities; so, too, does Henríquez’s novel offer a necessary meditation on the social and political origins and ramifications of intimate loss.

The Representation of Bereavements

This study divulges the connection between the living and the dead individuals. Although the dead separated from the world of the living, they were unconsciously linked and remembered by some of the living people. The personal grief is the calamity that generates an expressive consequence to interrupt the person’s appropriate choice of the surrounded objects. Adrienne Kennedy, in She Talks to Beethoven, examines the furtive motives that dominate and govern the individual’s thinking and behaviour throughout certain critical state of mind.

Constructing Grief: Processing Tragedy through the Ritualization of Embroidery

Through an analysis of one Iranian-Canadian woman’s experiences navigating personal and global trauma, the authors seek to explore how the act of embroidery is ritualized to aid in the processing of tragedy and loss. Of particular interest is how this performance lies at an intersection of COVID, global injustice, diaspora experiences, and personal grief.

When Death Hits You in Your Face, You Have to Listen": A Qualitative Investigation of Peer Bereavement Support Volunteers in Black American Communities.

Efforts to support grief in Black American communities are often under-recognized despite their potential to address negative mental health outcomes in this population. The aim of the current study was to qualitatively assess the community-level influence of bereavement support programs on predominantly Black communities in Baltimore, Maryland. Five focus groups (n = 23) were conducted with volunteers from a non-profit bereavement organization. Participants were queried about how their training may be sustainably applied as a community resource in Baltimore City. Thematic analysis from focus groups revealed three main themes: (1) enhancing feelings of belongingness fosters a sense of community cohesion, (2) use of bereavement support tools as a source of personal healing, and (3) applications of bereavement support in the community. Implications of our study support the widespread influence of peer-led bereavement support training to reduce the reverberating impact of personal and collective grief in Black American communities.

‘To You, Who May Find Yourself in This Story’: What a Baker’s Memoir Taught an Emerging Education Scholar

ABSTRACT This paper explores the ways in which pleasure-reading a Jackie Kai Ellis’ memoir, The Measure of my Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris turned into an intense exercise of critical reflection on personal growth and grief in pursuing academia. This story resonated deeply with me, especially due to how Ellis’ endeavouring to excel, find space, and secure a place in her work as an entrepeneur baker connects to the sometimes painful and often precarious path that so many scholars take to author themselves in the neoliberal university.

Humor and poignancy: Exploring narrative pathways to face death and bereavement

Themes of death and grief emerge in media entertainment in ways that are both poignant and humorous. In this experimental study, we extend research on eudaimonic narratives about death to consider those that are hedonic. Participants read a story about a woman giving a eulogy for her friend that was manipulated to be either poignant-focused or humor-focused, and answered questions about their responses to the story, feelings of connectedness with others, and death acceptance. The narrative conditions elicited similar levels of narrative engagement and appreciation, but the humor-focused narrative elicited more enjoyment than the poignant-focused narrative. Connectedness did not differ between conditions. However, the humor-focused narrative elicited more death acceptance when controlling for participants' personal loss acceptance and grief severity, and individual differences in the dark tetrad personality traits, trait depression, and religious upbringing. We tested these effects in an integrated path model and found that the model fit the data well and the narrative pathways explained variance in both death acceptance and connectedness. Our findings have implications for how death and grief are depicted in media entertainment: namely, that death is an inherently poignant topic and the addition of humorous elements in bereavement narratives may be especially effective in increasing death acceptance.