Separation Distress And Traumatic Distress

Kubler-Ross, E and Kessler, D (2005). On Grief and Grieving, London: Simon & Schuster. p7-28.

Society and culture have created scripts (i.e., social norms) that dictate the ways in which we are to grieve. These scripts also prescribe the unique ways in which men and women are expected to respond to grief. Specifically, men’s grief scripts suggest that men will resolve to grieve in solitude as a demonstration of their self-reliance. Men may also have muted emotional response and expressed emotions are typically in the form of anger or guilt (Martin & Doka, 2011). Comparatively, women’s grief scripts suggest that women are more emotive and seek support from others to help cope with loss (Martin & Doka, 2011).

Sitting in the middle of the floor was a sixteen year old girl who had just finished a basketball game. Usually after games, the girl would sit with the rest of the team to watch the boys play. Instead, the girl walked out of the gym with tears freely falling from her cheeks hoping nobody would notice them. After she had sat down, a few members of the team noticed her absence and went looking for her. The reason the girl didn’t want to be seen with tears was because some others on the team had been experiencing the same thing that she was. What this girl was experiencing was emotional trauma created by her male coach. The

The Two-Track Model of Bereavement is a model that states loss is conceptualized along two axes. Track I pertains to the biopsychosocial functioning in the event of a loss and Track II pertains to the bereaved’s continued emotional attachment and relationship to whoever is deceased. The effect of Track I is seen through the bereaved’s functioning, including their anxiety, their self-esteem and self-worth, and their depressive affect and cognitions. Noting the ability of one to invest in life tasks after experiencing a loss indicates how they are responding to the loss of the deceased. This Track is seen as an expression similar to one of trauma, or crisis. Track II holds that the bereaved has difficulty physically separating from the deceased. This can be seen in emotional, interpersonal, or cognitive ways. It is shown through imagery and memories that the bereaved experiences surrounding the deceased, whether positive or negative, as well as the emotional distance from them. These pictures in the bereaved’s head explain both the cognitive and emotional view of the person who has died (Rubin, 1999).

The life transition of death and dying is inevitably one with which we will all be faced; we will all experience the death of people we hold close throughout our lifetime. This paper will explore the different processes of grief including the bereavement, mourning, and sorrow individuals go through after losing someone to death. Bereavement is a period of adaptation following a life changing loss. This period encompasses mourning, which includes behaviors and rituals following a death, and the wide range of emotions that go with it. Sorrow is the state of ongoing sadness not overcome in the grieving process; though not pathological, persistent

The book, Lament For a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff talks about his pain and grief after losing his 25-year-old son (Joy, 2009). His son died while on a mountain-climbing expedition. Dr. Wolterstorff has several books published during his career as a philosophical theology professor in Yale Divinity. However, he wrote Lament for a Son with a different journal style since it is a personal thing for him. The book is similar to a journal as he narrates the events that happened before and after his son’s death. The emotions expressed in the book are common among people who lose close relatives. What matters is how a person handles the issue. Kubler-Ross invented the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptancethat explain the escalation of grief when stricken by bad news (Axelrod, 2004). The paper looks into the book and its relation to the five stages of grief.

Grief is often accompanied by feelings of anger, intense sadness, difficulty in engaging in happy memories, and obsession with the departed or with the situations surrounding the death of a loved one (Minuchin & Fishman, 2009). This is shown in the video “A Family Disrupted: Dealing with the Death of a Sibling”, when Lois cries uncontrollably and acts completely shocked and disconnected. The video also shows the effects of grief with Jerry, who feels angry and isolated, and often wishes to be alone. When an individual is grieving and cannot overcome the grief, it is important to seek a qualified therapist for help. Therapists will effectively tailor various therapeutic models to address the special needs of individuals or family members who are struggling with grief (Worden, 2010). To help the people who are grieving in this video, models like solution focused therapy are used.

Nicole Barle, Camille Wortman, and Jessica Latack from Stony Brook university wrote traumatic bereavement basic research and clinical implications. In their article they reviewed basic research on domains of life affected by traumatic loss and the risk factors that survivors are vulnerable to such as traumatic bereavement. In the article it for the describes the comprehensive treatment approach which is three critical components building resources processing trauma in facilitating morning. Traumatic death leaves the host with many troubling issues that are not typically present following a natural death because not only do they have to deal with the death of their loved 1 but also with the destruction of there most basic life assumptions. The

In this article, the opening explains what complicated grief is. Then, it goes on to explain a clinical trial that was done by Katherine Shear, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia (Schumer, 2009). In this clinical trial, it focused more on older adults who had lost a child or a spouse (Schumer, 2009). In this clinical trial, Shear figured out that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was twice as effective as regular Interpersonal Therapy (Schumer, 2009). Another study was done by Mary-Frances O’Connor (Schumer, 2009). In this study, she used an MRI to study the brain activity of people with complicated grief (Schumer, 2009). She found that when these people looked at photos

Grief is the act following the loss of a loved one. While grief and bereavement are normal occurrences, the grief process is a social construct of how someone should behave. The acceptable ways that people grieve change because of this construct. For a time it was not acceptable to grieve; today, however, it is seen as a necessary way to move on from death (Scheid, 2011).The grief process has been described as a multistage event, with each stage lasting for a suggested amount of time to be considered “normal” and reach resolution. The beginning stage of grief is the immediate shock, disbelief, and denial lasting from hours to weeks (Wambach, 1985). The middle stage is the acute mourning phase that can include somatic and emotional turmoil. This stage includes acknowledging the event and processing it on various levels, both mentally and physically. The final stage is a period of

The role of culture is important to how people experience and react to distress. Distress can be caused by environmental disasters such as earthquakes which have a major impact on the health and well-being of people. One such impact on well-being is that of mental health. With this in mind, my topic for future research is the following: What are mental health challenges faced by people in times of natural disasters and how can these challenges be addressed by health workers to aid the psychological well-being of cross-cultural populations to prepare for future traumatic disasters?

In her seminal work on grief and grieving, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced the concept now very well known as the Five (5) Stages of Grief, enumerated chronologically as follows: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In this concept, Kubler-Ross explored and discussed the normative stages that people go through when they experience the loss of a loved one and feel grief as result of this loss. It is also through these stages that people are now more aware of their feelings and thoughts when experiencing grief and the loss of a loved one. While the stages of loss are mainly developed for grief experienced with the death of a loved one, it is a generally accepted framework in understanding feelings of grief when an individual experiences the loss of a significant individual in his/her life. The discussions that follow center on the discussion of Kubler-Ross' 5 Stages of Grief, applied in the context of the Story of Job in the Bible.

Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) or Vicarious Trauma is the known count of professionals are an active witnessing role of a client mentally damaging experiences. According to The Role of Empathy in Burnout, Compassion Satisfaction, and Secondary Traumatic Stress amount Social Workers “STS can lead to workers experience or traumatic events […] STS can lead to workers experiencing trauma themselves, where rumination, flashbacks, physiological responses, fear, dread, or other active symptoms of psychological strain” (STS and Social Work Practice). In other words, direct care staff working in treatment centers almost certainly come into contact with aggressive clients, whose aggression is due to past traumatic events. Direct care staff will

Theories and models that have been developed to explain how or why we feel what we do and ways of working through grief. Many professionals have expanded on Freud’s model of bereavement, which emphasises that grief about personal attachments and the process of experiencing pain, detaching from the deceased and rebuilding a new life with them (Walsh, 2012). Margaret Stroebe and Hank Schut’s model attempts to explain how people alternate from intense pining and normality for the dead person (Walsh, 2012). Psychologist J. William Worden’s stage-based model outlines four tasks of grief, to: accept, work through, adjust, maintain and move on (Worden & Winokuer, 2011). Therese Rando’s model outlines how people proceed through six phases of mourning in order

Worden, J. (2009). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner. 4th ed. New York: