Mourning Process Research Articles

PRS32 Management Of The Covid-19 Pandemic Around Public Health: Ethical Perspectives

Objectives: To analyze the ethical perspectives in the management of the pandemic around public health. Methods: A literature review conducted between August and October 2020, using databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, Scielo, Scopus and Cochrane with the search engines: Ethics, Pandemic, COVID-19 and Public Health, and the Boolean operators AND and OR. Publications made between January and October 2020, in English and Spanish. Theses and conference abstracts were excluded. The analysis and synthesis were made in a descriptive way, using a spreadsheet. Forty-three articles were selected according to the methodological quality. Results: The analysis was made by continent according to the development of the pandemic. In Asia, individual rights, privacy and human dignity were respected, but in African countries, basic needs were affected, generating major ethical dilemmas. In Europe, the principle of charity was violated by not being able to follow up on patients. The principle of autonomy was transgressed due to the mourning process. The principle of non-maleficence is linked to futility. The principle of justice has been questioned in the face of the dilemma of scarcity and allocation of resources. In addition, in North America, aggression against social justice was identified as an exacerbation of social inequalities. In Latin America, all articles mention the vulnerability of all ethical principles Conclusions: It highlights the conflict between individual rights and collective health protection. Worldwide, there have been similarities in ethical conflicts. Social, cultural, political and economic differences have had an impact on the management of the pandemic. It is fundamental to generate global ethical entities in accordance with the culture and health system of each country, which allow for the discussion of measures to preserve the ethical aspects of the population.

The COVID-19 Disappeared: From Traumatic to Ambiguous Loss and the Role of the Internet for the Bereaved in Italy.

In Italy, in the very first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic there was a dramatic rise in mortality. However, families were forbidden because of lockdown regulations to be with their loved ones at their deathbeds or to hold funerals. This qualitative study examined bereavement experiences among family members, how they processed their grief, and how they used social networks in particular by uploading photographs during the working-through of bereavement. The sample was composed of 40 individuals aged 23–63 (80% women) from different Italian cities severely impacted by the virus, including a subgroup from the province of Bergamo, which was the city with the highest mortality rate during that time. All interviews were conducted by phone, Skype, or Zoom. Then, the transcriptions underwent a thematic analysis using Atlas.ti. The main themes that emerged were: abandonment anger and guilt, dehumanized disappeared, derealization and constant rumination, and social support and the importance of sharing photos on Facebook. Importantly, the use of social networks proved to be a valuable source of support and photographs were a powerful tool in facilitating the process of mourning by encouraging narration and sharing. Grief had a complex profile: on the one hand, it was traumatic and characterized by all the risk factors causing mourners to experience prolonged grief, but on the other, some features were similar to ambiguous loss (that occurs without closure and clear understanding) because of the impossibility to be with their relatives in their final moments. The possible relationships between ambiguous loss, the use of internet, and the risk of prolonged grief are discussed.

Post-9/11 Melancholic Identities: Memory, Mourning and National Consciousness

This paper discusses the ways in which Nadeem Aslam’s novels – Maps for Lost Lovers and The Wasted Vigil – highlight the need for a re-conceptualisation of immigrant identity, in post-9/11 world, by linking traumatic experiences of an individual to the collective memory of a community or nation. Taking cue from Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s concepts of mourning and melancholia, an interface between transnational movement and mourning will be investigated in order to emphasise how private grief becomes a metaphor for public grief. With reference to Aslam’s novels (that are set against the background of post-9/11 rhetoric of war on terrorism), I discuss how an endless process of diasporic nostalgia and mourning interacts with immigrants’ efforts to deal with different ‘others’ in their adopted homelands.

The process of mourning in Anne Enright’s The Gathering

AbstractAnne Enright’s writing evinces a nuanced sensitivity to words which nourishes a tension between the realist style and a strong self‐consciousness. This is evident in The Gathering, in which the seemingly chronological occurrences weave out a dynamic pattern of narrative time. Examining Veronica’s experimentation with tense, I argue that the ongoing writing aligns with her progressive mourning. Specifically, her reconfiguration of memories in the past reveals her temporal perspectives in the present, which sheds light upon her struggle to come to terms with Liam’s death. While Liam’s ghost exposes Veronica’s wish to prolong his presence, his last journey arranged in the present tense is her reenactment of his death. Veronica’s imagination of the inaccessible past and the disruption of retrospective narration suggest an overall strategy of presentification to counter the afterwardness of her belated writing. In addition, a series of changes in Veronica’s attitudes towards sex and motherhood attest to her progress in mourning, even though mourning for one’s loss is an unsolvable issue. The temporal self‐reflexivity in The Gathering, exhibited in Veronica’s manipulation of tenses and temporal perspectives, not only aligns with the Irish women writers’ battle against the amnesia imposed by the state and the church but also echoes the postmodern challenge of authenticity.

The Silent Witness Project as Rhetorical Hybrid: Toward a Theory of Collective Mourning

Public, visual displays, that aid in the mourning process and summon viewers into action, constitute a rhetorical hybrid that combines epideictic and deliberative rhetoric. This essay suggests a theory of collective mourning that seeks to explain the rhetorical import and function of these multimedia, public displays. The combination of form and content allows the critic to understand how the epideictic and deliberative function in this genre of discourse. After explaining the theory, a case study of the Silent Witness Project follows.

"I Do Not Have a Racist Bone in My Body": Psychoanalytic Perspectives on What is Lost and Not Mourned in Our Culture's Persistent Racism.

Racism is a disavowed marauding presence in the white psyche, a pathological formation that weakens psychic structures and creates a vulnerability to acting out that is hateful, discombobulated, and destructive. Examining it in its cultural, historical, and clinical contexts can enable its conscious ownership and mastery, which entails a process of mourning. Because racism is carried widely in the cultural surround and individually, it must be addressed by psychoanalysts. Cases are presented to show that racism is accessible to analysis in the consulting room.

Strategies to Cope With the COVID-Related Deaths Among Family Members.

The extraordinary circumstances of deaths during COVID-19 pandemic have been challenging for the deceased's families. This contribution aims to describe some spontaneous strategies that family members may adopt to cope with the loss of a relative for COVID-19. The present reflection derives from the experience of a clinical psychology unit of one of the biggest public hospital in Milan, Italy, which supported 246 families of COVID-19 victims in the 1st days after the loss. Spontaneous strategies used by family members to deal with such a unique mourning process involved: creating alternative good-bye rituals, normalizing the loss, addressing faith and hope, highlighting the perks of isolation, supporting others in need, and delivering the bad news to others. These observed strategies may suggest how to assess and support a “normal” bereavement process during the extraordinary COVID-19 circumstances, in order to prevent further psychological distress.

Comprometimento da qualidade de vida dos cuidadores de pacientes em tratamento paliativo

Este artigo buscou abordar a qualidade de vida dos familiares/cuidadores de pacientes que recebem assistência em domicílio, considerando que a prestação de cuidados nesse modelo, exige muito tempo da vida desses profissionais e/ou familiares envolvidos nesse processo. Abordando também os sentimentos envolvidos nesse delicado processo, tanto de quem cuida, quanto de quem recebe esse cuidado, e como passam pelo processo do luto e dos desafios dessa jornada. Como resultado foi observado que o envolvimento do cuidador, enquanto membro da família, por dedicar-se por longos períodos ao enfermo, tem áreas da sua vida comprometida, podendo acarretar sobrecarga física, emocional como problemas psicológicos e/ou dificuldades financeiras. Assim sendo, a prevenção à saúde mental é a melhor estratégia para evitar que esses profissionais desenvolvam sintomas depressivos, advindos desse acúmulo de funções e carga emocional vivida, e em decorrência tenham sua qualidade de vida comprometida. Nos mostrando a necessidade da integração de uma equipe multiprofissional no auxílio ao cuidador e paciente, proporcionando uma abordagem humanizada de forma ampla e respeitando os valores e hábitos envolvidos em todo processo de cuidado.

Grief and Mourning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Psychological and Pastoral Perspective

This article considers the difficulties associated with grief, mourning, and healing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current pandemic has affected the way individuals overcome grief, since the bereaved must grieve without the usual social, cultural, and religious supports. Due to the ban on visiting the sick in hospitals as well as gathering and mourning in funeral homes, many people are experiencing pathological grief. This article indicates the importance of pastorally accompanying people who are going through the complicated process of mourning, and it emphasizes that, through spiritual help and psychological accompaniment, this period can lead to healing that results in posttraumatic adaptation (resilience) and inner development.

Mourning, Bereavement and the Grief-Work of Traumatic Brain Injured Patients: Theory and Practice

Background: Grief, as a universal human experience, follows certain stages as described in different (at times overlapping) models, by various researchers. However, the completion of certain emotional tasks and processes is required for grief to be resolved, allowing us to return to full living. The dynamics and expression of grief and mourning in the traumatic brain-injured patient present specific challenges for therapeutic intervention since the mourner may be impaired both cognitively and emotionally by the sequelae of their injury and is often unable to work-through their grief in a coherent and continuous process. In these cases, the therapist should take a very active role in the process, eliciting memories and emotions, and then integrating them together with the patient’s associations and post-injury experiences, and grief reactions to the current loss. Moreover, when the loss occurs during, or after a rehabilitation program, the therapist’s memories of anecdotes previously recounted by the patient may be elicited and offered by the therapist, and incorporated into the present treatment. Procedure: A case will be presented illustrating the complexity of the mourning process in a traumatic brain injured patient. Conclusion: While keeping in mind the general reccomendations for the grief-work with traumatic brain injured persons, there is a clear need to “tailor” an individual approache for each and every single patient.

The mourning process of older people with Alzheimer’s disease within one year after losing their spouse:

The mourning process of older people with Alzheimer’s disease within one year after losing their spouse:

Is PTSD the New Normal? Survival Tips for Professional and the Value of Mindfulness

At the time of this publication the Corona Virus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reports 4.8 million COVID-19 related fatalities. Every life lost leaves behind multiple lives mourning. Considering parents, spouses, partners, children, close relatives, and friends of those who succumbed to the pandemic, it is reasonable to extrapolate 4.8 million fatalities to 15-48 million people experiencing trauma, grief, and the mourning process related to the death of a loved one.

The Blackstar: Persona, Narrative, and Late Style in the Mourning of David Bowie on Reddit

This article considers how David Bowie’s last persona, The Blackstar, framed his death through the narratives of mourning it provoked on the social media site Reddit. The official narrative of death, through the media, and the unofficial narrative of death, through the fan, can contradict each other, with fans usually bringing their own lived experiences to the mourning process. David Bowie is a performer of personas. While Bowie died in 2016, his personas have continued to live on, informing his legacy, his work, and his death reception. Through the concepts of persona, narrative, authenticity, late style, and mourning, this article finds that Bowie’s Blackstar persona actively constructs fan’s interaction with Bowie’s death. Instead of separate and contradicting narratives, this article finds that users on Reddit underpin and extend the official narrative of his death, using Bowie’s persona as a way to construct and establish their own mourning. As such, Bowie’s last persona is further entrenched as one of authentic mourning, of a genius constructing his own passing. With these narratives, fans construct their own personas, informing how they too would like to die: artistically and with grace.

“Divali is for The Dead”: Abiding Relatedness and Bittersweet Revelries in a Tamil Nadu Village

In the face of orthodox ritual imperatives to alienate and render them ineffable, how are ancestors made present to and represented by their living kin, specifically during festivities? This article juxtaposes Divali’s customary overtones of triumph over evil and darkness and cultivations of prosperity with additional, if not alternative, associations with mortality, mourning, and memory in a village in Tamil Nadu. In delineating the funerary and melancholic nuances of this “festival of lights,” I demonstrate how—contrary to Hindu ritual norms—the deceased are not simply exiled to an otherworldly realm to be invoked only on discrete occasions. Instead, they continue to be part of a lingering intimacy and an everyday sociality that hinges upon cooking, eating, gifting, and sharing. Through the material infrastructure underpinning rituals and the casual routinization of remembrance, these villagers evoke, include, and continue to care for their deceased kin. The dead haunt festivities not as unwelcome ghosts or unexpected guests but as intensely longed for kin. In the process, an alternative and intimate theology of death, mourning, and remembrance emerges.

Border Closures: Experiences of Ni‐Vanuatu Recognized Seasonal Employer Scheme Workers

Border Closures: Experiences of <scp>Ni‐Vanuatu</scp> Recognized Seasonal Employer Scheme Workers

The Role of Social Support in the Relationship Between Adolescents’ Level of Loss and Grief and Well-Being

In this study, the model, developed to examine the role of social support in the relationship between adolescents&amp;rsquo; level of loss and grief and well-being, was tested. In this study, the descriptive research method was used, and its participants consisted of 216 adolescents who were high school students, in Turkey. Scales used in this study include Personal Information Form; Grief Scale; Five-Dimensional Well-Being Scale for Adolescents (EPOCH); Social Support Assessment Scale for Children and Adolescents (CASSS and Personal Information Form). The structural equation model was used to examine the mediator role of the social support in the association between grief and well-being among adolescents. It was found the hypothesized model fit the data well, and social support fully mediated in the association between grief and well-being. The high level of social support in the loss and mourning process of adolescents makes it easier to cope with grief and positively affects their well-beings. These results are important for focusing on adolescents who experience lost and grief, providing effective mental health services and demonstrating the importance of strengthening social support systems. Future studies with longitudinal follow-ups are suggested to explore actual causal relationships.

Recent Thornton Wilder Scholarship: 2016–2020

Recent Thornton Wilder Scholarship: 2016–2020

La supervisión de un equipo de atención domiciliaria en cuidados paliativos

Se pretende mostrar la supervisión del equipo de atención domiciliaria y de soporte (PADES) inserido en la red de atención sanitaria del estado español, qué profesionales lo conforman y sus funciones, así como la población a la que está destinado: los enfermos terminales. Se justifica la idoneidad de la supervisión como tarea de formación, de apoyo emocional y de resolución de conflictos. Se describe en qué consiste la supervisión, sus protagonistas, la formulación de la demanda por parte del equipo, la respuesta del supervisor a la demanda, la realización de la supervisión, sus posibilidades, sus condiciones y sus límites, así como las condiciones de su finalización. Se concluye que la supervisión, como la vida de los usuarios del Pades, tiene dos fechas límite entre las cuales comienza y acaba. Una vez finalizada la supervisión, la cualidad de su desarrollo va a condicionar el proceso de duelo que transitará entre el agradecimiento y el resentimiento.

Mirant al cel/Eyes on the Sky: The (Im)possible Expiation of the Spectral Other

This article analyzes the contribution of the new Catalan documentary in the current process of reclaiming the collective historical memory repressed by Francoism and by the Silence Deal established during the political transition to democracy after Franco’s death. This analysis will consider some films that use the family metaphor as a national allegory to represent the plight of the Catalan nation. The main thesis of this study is to underline the need for reparation regarding the crimes committed by Francoism during and after the Spanish Civil War and the fact that such a reparation has not taken place neither in fiction nor in historical terms. This essay relies on the post-Derridian concept of “hauntology” as a theoretical framework to study the spectral textual encounters that mark the symptoms of an uninterrupted mourning process that appeals to the historical memory in search of dignity and closure. Methodologically, this study offers a close textual reading of Jesús Garay’s film Mirant al cel (Eyes on the Sky, 2008) as a perfect case study where the spectral conflict between victims and victimizers is acted out in the context of Barcelona and Catalonia and the series of urban mass bombings carried out by the Italian Royal Legion under the direct supervision of Il Duce, Mussolini. Garay’s film special relevance lies in the fact of its being one of the few documentaries that revisits those three dramatic days in March 1938 that became a tragic rehearsal of the massive urban aerial raids of the Second World War.

Pathological Study of Stillbirths Placentas at Muhimbili National Hospital, Tanzania

Abstract Introduction/Objective Stillbirth is defined as fetal death that occurs at gestational age of ≥28 weeks. In our setting clinical assessment is the only method used to determine cause of stillbirths, with no reported proportion of unknown clinical diagnosis. Studies showed that unknown cause of stillbirths can be reduced by examination of placenta. Causal identification aids in the mourning process and identifying recurrence risks. The study aimed to describe pathological changes in the placentas of stillbirths which have risk to cause fetal death Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study done for the period of 6 months, it involved examination of 80 placentas of stillbirths born at gestational age of ≥ 28 weeks, placentas were fixed in 10% neutral buffered formalin for 8–12 hours. Grossing and interpretation of placenta pathology was according to Amsterdam Placental Workshop Group Consensus Statement. Results Out of 80 stillbirths, 32(40%) had unknown clinical diagnosis. Majority of stillbirth placentas 71(91%) found with either one or combined pathologies with the risk to cause stillbirth. Maternal vascular malperfusion was the commonest pathology and was significantly associated with preterm stillbirths. Maternal floor infarction, a placenta pathology with risk to cause fetal death and high risk of recurrence was among the pathologies found, was seen in 4(5%) of stillbirth placentas. Conclusion Findings in this study clearly indicated the importance of pathological examination of placenta in determining cause of stillbirth. Placenta examination in stillbirths can identify more pathology related to stillbirths than clinical assessment alone.