Few thanatological studies focus on the impact of the death of a parent on college students between the ages of 17 and 23; a knowledge limitation that may be doing more harm than good through ignorance, avoidance, and inflexible policies. This phenomenological study used narrative inquiry to explore how students from a variety of backgrounds…

Death anxiety has been an unremitting agent of the human experience. The psychological dilemma posed by the awareness and forecasting of death can increase anxiety, thus affecting well-being through the compulsive desire or will to persist (Becker, 1973; Yalom, 1980). Such psychological armor can manifest in conscious and unconscious behaviors,…

Grieving the deaths of immediate and extended family members as well as friends is a common experience among traditional-age college students. The overarching purpose of this study was to provide a more nuanced understanding of how various family grief communication factors (i.e., frequency, quality, willingness to communicate--personal/perceived…

In 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was murdered by Minneapolis Police. As social media and news outlets reported on Floyd's death, racial justice activists began to organize under the Black Lives Matter movement. The United States was also on lockdown due to the global pandemic -- COVID-19. Prior researchers have noted that the lockdown…

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been an important model for the understanding of end user acceptance regarding technology and a framework used in thousands of researched scenarios since publication in 1986. Similarly, the Kubler-Ross model of death and dying has also been used as a model for the study of acceptance within the medical…

The definition of a traumatic event in Criterion A for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was narrowed in DSM-5 for events involving indirect exposure to the death of a loved one. Whereas the DSM-IV definition encompassed the sudden, unexpected death of a loved one regardless of the circumstances, the DSM-5 definition now requires that the death…

Past studies have suggested that during their time on campus, as many as half of all undergraduates will experience the death of a loved one (Balk, 2001; Balk, Walker, & Baker, 2010; Holland & Neimeyer, 2010). The purpose of this study was to use a phenomenological method to uncover a thick, rich description of the lived experience of…

The purpose of this study was to identity how events perceived as traumatic or very difficult to handle, factors of emotional distress, and demographics may predict nonmedical use of prescription drugs (NMPD) among traditional undergraduate college students. This secondary analysis utilized data from the National College Health Assessment II (NCHA…

Experiencing the death of a family member at a young age is a confusing time for many children. Some clinicians have reported that parental death is the most stressful life event for children, and some studies have traced adults' mental health difficulties to unresolved childhood grief (Balk, 1983; Krahnstoever, 2006). Despite the hardships…

Suicide is a deliberate act of annihilation against one's self due to a crisis of problem solving. Far too many youth are dying by their own hands resulting in suicide being the third leading cause of death for 10-19 year olds (CDC, 2005). Suicide is particularly problematic for adolescents due to the impulsivity inherent in adolescent…