World of Bereavement

This book is a manual on death studies which covers all related aspects from ritual and religion to governmental and attitudinal. It better prepares students and researchers to work in the field of death and dying, trauma, and bereavement in clinical, organizational, and administrative settings (micro, meso, and macro), enhancing their baseline knowledge about culture and grief, history, ritual and religion, trauma, and end of life issues in contemporary society, from a family systems perspective. The micro perspective includes individual and familial responses to and views of loss, including emotional, psychosocial, ritualistic, and biological influences; the meso perspective includes larger systems of the specific tradition (medical, educational, religious, governmental, community) in the context of individual, familial, and culturally accepted caregiving/interventions/responses in the aftermath of loss; the macro system broadly examines historical influences, ritual, and societal attitudes. Each contributor provides a general template outline to follow so that all aspects are covered in a similar style. In summary, there is a growing demand for this type of education on college campuses. For example, several death and grief related symposiums held on the campus of Arizona State University since 2005 have drawn growing numbers of students and community members with up to 500 attendees. ASU s social work department offers a graduate course on traumatic death and bereavement which fills the classroom space at 110 students, many from other disciplines who are then placed on a waiting list for the course. This volume fills a gap in the current body of literature, offering an excellent interdisciplinary book for students, clinicians, and researchers.