Death and Dying

Title: Using examples of grief from block three, discuss how useful theories of grief are in explaining individual reactions to bereavement? Discuss with reference to either psychological or social theories of grief.
 

In this essay I shall firstly define grief and bereavement outlining the grieving process that we may experience when we lose people in our lives. I will then examine the psychological theories and concepts related to this process. Next I will assess how useful these theories are and look at the challenges that different psychologist have identified as part of this process and how people cope with them looking. Finally, I will explore health care professionals and the factors considered when implementing this knowledge in practice.

The death of someone close to us is something we all experience at some time in our lives; this could be due to either a sudden death, or even one that we presumed before it actually happened.   Grief caused by loss is an experience that everyone has at some point in their lives experienced; however, the need to recognise the loss is a personal experience. Although it has to be said that two or more individuals may have similar personal experience, their reactions could be completely different; after all, the fundamental substrate of grief is the emotional response to loss.   This is due to life itself, however, not all have been as major as death, other causes such as divorce, separation within a relationship, loss of   identity even loss of physical capacity through illness or accident can cause psychological grief.   Our life experiences and the lessons we learn through coping with painful but important losses eventually help us to cope with more significant ones.   For most of us when we suffer from a major loss it is known as bereavement. Reactions to traumatic events seem to be determined by a number of variables such as the nature of the event, the character, personality, previous and present experiences,...