SW 5013

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• SW 5013
• Social Work Practice with
• Death, Grief
• Loss
• Instructor
• Dr. Margaret Tynan

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(No Transcript)
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Introductions

• Name
• Field Placement
• Experience
• Field of Interest
• Why Taking Course
• Word Association with Loss

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Course Overview

• Philosophical/Historical Perspective
• Theoretical Frameworks
• The Process
• Issues of Diversity
• Interventions
• Legal Ethical Issues
• Circumstance of Death, Grief Loss
• Resources Supports
• Social Worker Unresolved Grief

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Historical Perspective

• Paleolithic period (2.5 mil-10,000 BC)
  Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon cared for dead
• Death the source of all religion
• Connection between death organization of human
  culture
• Significant response to death of important
  leader in virtually all cultures
• Biological being SOCIAL BEING grafted on by
  members of society

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EARLY in HISTORY PERSON MASTER of OWN DEATH
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES

• Death rarely sudden
• Sudden death feared--no time for
  repentance/deprived of death experience

• Minor illness often fatal
• One felt approaching death
• Others expected to warn of death
• Death more public
• People, even strangers expected to follow priest
  to dyings bedside
• Dying persons primary role, presiding over his
  or her own death

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Beginning in the 17th Century

• No longer sole sovereignty
• over own life own death
• Need to share with family
• serious decisions about death
• Enlightened physicians dispersed
• crowds around bedside
• With modern medicine no longer sure
• serious illness will be fatal
• Concealment of imminent death
• from dying person seen as duty

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In small, unified simpler societies death of
important individual brings serious damage to
social fabric. Elaborate funerals are needed to
restore social system function
In US until the early 19th Century

• Smaller, more unified simpler societies
• Family integrated into community
• Death great meaning for individual community

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• In the US at the
• Close of the 20th Century Death More of a Private
  Affair
• Secularization in Religion
• Specialization Diversification in Commerce
• Individualism
• Mobility in Social Relations

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DENIAL OF MOURNING

• Before 13th Century mourning--expression a right,
  necessary, spontaneous public
• Beginning in 13th Century mourning
  ritualized- professional mourners employed
• Middle Ages-family seclusionmay not have
  attended funeralswomen did not attend
• Purpose of Seclusion
• Allow survivors to shelter grief from world
• Prevent survivors from forgetting the dead too
  soon

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DENIAL OF MOURNINGcontinued

• 19th Century
• seclusion severity continued but more
  voluntary exclusion of women from funeral no
  longer obligation
• Seclusion transformed from physical to moral
  level
• Mourning again a right, a return to spontaneity
  but with restraint of ritual
• Impassioned, self-indulgent grief, dramatic
  demonstration funeral mythology
• 20th Centuryno longer correct to display ones
  grief

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DEFINITION OF TERMS

• LOSS Person, thing or amount lost (Webster)
• CUMULATIVE LOSS series of losses throughout life
• DYING period during which organism loses its
  viability
• DYING PERSON one with a condition from which no
  recovery can be expected
• DEATH
• Starts with dying, ends with being dead
• Point person becomes physically dead
• Harvard Medical School Criteria to Certify Death
• Unreceptivity unresponsivity
• No movements or breathing
• No reflexes
• Flat electroencephalogram
• No circulation to or within the brain

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DEFINITION OF TERMS continued
BEREAVEMENT state of being deprived of a loved
one by deathan experience of loss GRIEF complex
reactions to bereavementprocess of adjustment
after loss or death GRIEF WORK process of
slowly working through the realization impact
of a lossdealing with the inner turmoil
emotional physical trauma of loss MOURNING
overt expression of grief bereavement,
culturally patterned expectations about the
expression of grief