Reality Of Death Research Articles

The Social Reality of Death

The Social Reality of Death

Spiritual values and death anxiety: Implications for counseling with terminal cancer patients.

Death fear as a function of discomfort level, previous experience with death, and religiosity among indigent cancer patients in a county general hospital was investigated. The patients were those participants in the Cancer Rehabilitation Program at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas who were judged closest to death. The Allport Religious Orientation Scale, Discomfort Indices, and the Templer Death Anxiety Scale were administered to each patient. Patients also participated in a .structured interview which examined death fear at the conscious and imagery (unconscious) levels, religious values, and support systems. The Death Anxiety Scale was also administered to a standardization sample of outpatients in the Eye Clinic of the same hospital. Results indicate that these patients depend strongly on perceived strength of religious beliefs and integral religious values in their coping with imminent death. Also highly associated with minimal or low fear of death was previous experience with a dying person with whom one had a close relationship. The mean Death Anxiety Scale score for the cancer patients was significantly lower than that obtained for the standardization population. These findings reveal the various sources of support that are very important to this population and that are suggestive of untapped resources available as appropriate intervention avenues. Because human beings are gifted with the capacity to imagine the future and to relate to this future through the use of symbolic language, awareness of inevitable death becomes an important element in a broad base of attitudes and behaviors. This is particulary true for the fatally ill individual who is continuously confronted by the reality of death. The treatment of the dying patient, however, has been systematically

Does Death Education Belong in the Middle School Curriculum?

The anxieties of adults can influence children to have dis torted perceptions about the realities of death. Children must be prepared to deal with death as a natural consequence of living, and the middle school classroom is an appropriate place for such preparation according to the writers.

Women in Widowhood

There are almost 10 million widowed women in this country, constituting almost 5 percent of the total population.1 Their median age is sixty-four.2 As a minority group they suffer from sexism, ageism, and in some cases, racism.3 All of them suffer because they are perceived to be carriers and transmitters of the reality of death. They may be abused by bureaucracies and insensitive professionals, shunned by relatives and former friends, exploited by racketeers and Don Juans, discriminated against by employers, and berated by others in similar circumstances. They belong to a subculture whose members live in relative oblivion, submerged in the despair of loneliness, chiding each other for self-pity, advising each other to keep busy, individually hoping for an avenue of escape, and collectively succumbing to an attitude of hopelessness. Most widows hate the word widow. Many have told me that people respond to them as if they have an infectious disease. The model of a pervasive illness is suggested by their questions. They want to know when-if ever-they will get over it. They want to know if anyone ever completely recovers, if anyone is ever cured.

Reflections on my children's experiencing death

Abstract The understanding of death is a difficult task for most adults. Traditionally children have been denied opportunities to experience the realities of death based on the following assumptions: (1) that children are unable to fully comprehend death, (2) that they are not psychologically prepared for such an experience, and (3) that it is the responsibility of the parents to protect them from such “traumatic” experiences. What has not been taken into consideration is the side effect that results from the diversionary tactics used to protect them from direct experience with death. This article examines a family's confrontation with death on several occasions and demonstrates how children must deal with the experience in their own way and at their own level. By experiencing the loss of a loved one first hand, a child is given the opportunity to develop feelings such as sympathy, compassion, grief, and sorrow. By sharing in the experiencing of these feelings with adults, the child is provided with model...

The Heroic Dead of Israel

Living with the oppressive reality of death is difficult for most societies. Israel is no different in this respect. But there is a way in which Israel is impertinently different. Here death is somehow more fitly celebrated. Not in a macabre fashion, but accepted for what it is: both a tragedy and an opportunity for celebration. It is celebrated in the true meaning of that word: “solemnized, with appropriate rites and ceremonies.” Anthropologists studying primitive peoples find the rites associated with death a clue to many values of the tribes. I believe that a trenchant sociological analysis of societies from the perspective of funeral rites may get us closer to the inmost core of values than their other analytic strategies.'This essay is to be understood in that light.

ПОЉУПЦИ БЕЗ БРОЈА – БРАНИК ВЕЧНОЈ НОЋИ: ПЕТА КАТУЛОВА ПЕСМА И <em>ЗА СТАРИМ КАТУЛОМ </em>СИМЕ ПАНДУРОВИЋА

У својој песми број 5, једној од четири, директно или индиректно посвећених бројању пољубаца, Гај Валерије Катул супротставља страстан и интензиван живот вечној ноћи, у ствари, смрти. Такав живот, испуњен небројеним пољупцима и сталним давањем и примањем, лек је и против опаких стараца и зле зависти. Српски песник Сима Пандуровић, који за мото своје песме За старим Катулом узима четири Катулова стиха, рационалан је и доследан песимиста. За њега, такође, једина могућност да се живот издржи је љубав, али и повлачење у самоћу. Треба побећи од људи и друштва, али побећи удвоје.

Old English Riddle No. 39

Like the Old English poem 74 on metempsychosis, which will soon be discussed in another article, the present poem 39 has puzzled Anglo-Saxon scholars ever since Dietrich in 1859 suggested the solution Day. Later proposals, Time and Moon, are hardly more convincing than the first. In presenting here the solution Hypostasis Death I wish to say that I consider it to be supported not only by the contents of the poem, but also by historical material, from which it may be concluded that during the early Middle Ages speculative theologians inclined towards the belief in the reality of death.