BACKGROUND Standards for bereavement care propose that support should be matched to risk and need. However, studies in many countries demonstrate that palliative care services continue to adopt a generic approach in offering support to bereaved families. OBJECTIVE To identify patterns of bereavement support in palliative care services based upon the experience of bereaved people from a popula...

BACKGROUND Palliative care standards advocate support for grieving caregivers, given that some bereaved people fail to integrate their loss, experience ongoing emotional suffering and adverse health outcomes. Research shows that bereavement support tends to be delivered on an ad hoc basis without formal assessment of risk or need. To align support with need, assessment of bereavement risk is ne...

Abstract The philosophy of grief has directed little attention to bereavement’s impact on perceptual experience. However, misperceptions, hallucinations and other anomalous experiences are strikingly common following the death a loved one. Such range from misperceiving stranger be deceased, phantom sights, sounds smells, nebulous quasi-sensory one’s presence. This paper draws upon enactive sens...

The revisions DSM-5 and ICD-11 are attempting to describe psychopathological reactions to bereavement. The delineation between depressive disorder and normal bereavement-related depressed state lacks sufficient data to guide diagnostic development. In contrast, there is strong evidence for a diagnosis of prolonged grief that is distinguished from depression and involves marked impairment.

Depending on cogmtlve and emotional development, an adolescent may grieve very differently than a child or an adult. While mature enough to understand death's irreversibility, adolescents may not fully comprehend the enduring consequences of a loved one's death. As the desire to separate from their families and forge new intimate relationships with peers assumes increasing priority, adolescents...

OBJECTIVE Exposures to psychological stress in early life may contribute to the development or exacerbation of asthma. We undertook a cohort study based on data from several population-based registers in Denmark and Sweden to examine whether bereavement in childhood led to increased asthma hospitalization. METHODS All singleton children born in Denmark during 1977-2008 and in Sweden during 19...

Spousal bereavement is considered as one of the most intense stressors requiring substantial life readjustment [1]. The consequences for physical health of the loss of a spouse have been studied extensively over the last three decades. Summarizing findings from 13 longitudinal studies published since 1999, Stroebe et al. [2] pointed out that an increase in morbidity is consistently observed in ...

INTRODUCTION We aimed to determine the level of bereavement and depression symptoms among elderly patients who experience the loss of a significant other and the relationship between depressive symptoms and bereavement symptoms. METHODS The study sample consisted of elderly adults who lost a significant other at least 6 months prior to the submission time. Participants were recruited from pat...

BACKGROUND Medical students are generally young people, often away from home for the first time and undertaking a course in which they are learning to care for people at all stages of life, including those approaching death. Existing research indicates that their experiences of personal bereavement may have significant implications for their pastoral welfare and medical learning. No previous st...