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Thanatology
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Thanatology is the study of dying and bereavement. In our society, there seems to be a taboo when talking about or dealing with death. Thus, thanatology is a relatively new field. Many people considered studying dying people very cold and heartless, but many more people know and understand everyone must die for the world to continue.
In the 1950s and 60s, social scientists and psychologists began to explore the dying process. Programs were developed to provide counseling and therapy for dying individuals and their family members. The goal was to help them to better understand and cope with what was happening. Generally, counseling for dying patients and the family is based on a model that goes through a series of stages or phases. One of the first theories to address dying was Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' Stages of Dying. Since her early work, there have been a number of persons who have explored the processes of dying, grief, bereavement, and mourning.
Bereavement, Grief, and Mourning
When the end of one's life comes, a new situation arises for family and friends: grief, mourning and bereavement. We suffer when someone close to us dies. We are bereaved.
Our status is also changed. We now can be a widower, or a child may become an orphan. The experience of bereavement can take on many forms. The fact is we've lost someone very close to us. Understanding bereavement gives us a better idea of what the person might be experiencing. Grief is a response to bereavement. It's how the survivors feel.
Grief looks like a simple word, but it's a terribly difficult process. Everyone can experience grief in different ways. A clinical study done by Erich Lindemann (1942) described the physical signs of grief. He writes:
"The picture shown by people with acute grief is remarkably uniform. Common to all is the following syndrome: sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from 20 minutes to an hour at a time, feelings of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and intensive subjective distress described as tension or pain." (p.145)
Some other symptoms were insomnia, problems in concentrating, failure in memory, and repeating things over and over again. Not everyone experiences what Lindemann described. Still, many people, especially those faced with a sudden death, will show some of these signs in their grieving process. It is not uncommon for people with acute grief to feel like they are going crazy and that it is only going to get worse. Grief can also leave one open to physical sickness.
Mourning is an expression of the bereaved person's sadness. Different cultures mourn differently. It is expected that a bereaved person grieves and that the signs are shown through mourning, but this is not always true. A bereaved person may not grieve; a grieving person may try not to show the signs of mourning, and a person mourning may not really feel the effects of grief.
Death takes many forms and occurs throughout the lifespan.
In many ways, American society fails to support the bereaved person. We need to better understand the processes of dying and grieving. Some other topics to consider are:
Attitudes toward Death
Understanding Death and Grief
Funeral Rituals
Suicide
Violent Deaths
Death and Bereavement across Cultures
Infant Death
Death of a Child
The Adolescent Death
Dying in Mid-Adulthood
Death and the Elderly
