Having conversations about death and dying can be very difficult to initiate and engage in with others. The following activity, based on the card game The Death Deck, was designed to encourage students to engage with others about difficult conversations surrounding death and dying. The activity provides students with questions and prompts that…

Given the legacy of John Bowlby, Attachment theory has often portrayed separation from a caregiver as likely to provoke protest, despair, and ultimately detachment in infants and young children. Indeed, the emotional challenge of separation is built into a key measurement tool of Attachment theory, the Strange Situation. However, James Robertson,…

This single-class activity expands current literature on person-centered messages by providing attention to message quality in mediated contexts. Students begin the activity by reviewing a hypothetical scenario in which a friend has posted about a family death loss on social media. After reviewing this scenario, students then create sample…

The author argues that English teachers are in a unique position to respond to death through writing, reading, and speaking. She describes four experiences and offers specific, language-based responses guided by experience and literature.

Background: Many people with intellectual disabilities are affected by death, yet conversations about death are often avoided by staff working with them. This study aimed to assess staff training needs and to develop, trial and evaluate a training course on communicating about death and dying. Method:(i) Semi-structured interviews with 20 staff in…

Children experience grief and loss from death, divorce, parental incarceration, and similar situations of being placed in foster care or adoption. These youths may be challenged in recovery due to lacking the necessary life experience and coping skills. They may also lack the appropriate support networks to work through their grief as their…

This article draws on interviews with women who experienced the death of their mothers during early childhood to explore the grieving process of a child for a lost parent. The author describes the women's recollections of how the loss was talked about, or not, in their families and how this impacted the women's mourning and coping. Most women who…

Specialists in death, dying, and bereavement and their consequences for individuals, families, and communities have experience and research findings that are relevant to an understanding of the reactions of individuals faced by deadly violence. At such times, powerful emotions and ingrained patterns of thought and behavior can given rise to…

On a small island belonging to the Alutiiq people of Old Harbor, 11 people sat around a campfire. Two community leaders, a nonprofit organizer, an academic scholar, a native filmmaker, and six young people from the Indian reservation of Taos Pueblo in New Mexico gathered after a day of interacting with Old Harbor residents--fishing, hunting and…

Listening to the dying poses special challenges. This paper proposes a contingency framework for describing and assessing various circumstances when listening to the dying. It identifies current approaches to listening, applies the contingency framework toward effectively listening to the dying, and proposes a new type of listening called…

This article provides a brief discussion of the various types of grief and posits that the many types, particularly disenfranchised, lend themselves to recovery through reconnection. Bereavement groups offer a particularly useful means of connection with a larger grieving community and allow validation from others along with personalization of…

Describes an elective, upper-level course on caring for terminally ill patients, designed for baccalaureate nursing students. Discusses the hospice concept and its background, course design, communication with dying patients and their families, and outcomes of the course as measured by a pretest and two posttests. (CH)

Death is an unavoidable fact of human life, which cannot be totally ignored in education. Children reflect on death and raise questions that deserve serious answers. If an educator completely evades the issue, children will seek other conversation partners. It is possible to find arguments both from secular and religious sources, which alleviate…

While many health care delivery systems are criticized for the dehumanizing way they treat patients, hospice care presents a refreshing alternative to health care for the terminally ill. Patients appropriate for hospice care are those with six months or less to live. Interpersonal communication education is an important component of hospice care…

A program using role-playing to model humanistic attitudes and encourage humanistic behavior in internal medicine residents is described. Resident attitudes and key features relating to the program's success are noted. (MSE)