Suicide is increasingly understood and predicted as an intersection of biological, psychological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors. We have some basic knowledge of these factors and how they interact, but presently we know very little about how culture can play a role as a variable that influences suicide. Suicide Among Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups will go a long way towards filling that gap by pulling together cutting edge empirical research from general cultural diversity literature and applying it to suicide assessment, treatment, and prevention theory and practice. By looking outside of the limited cross-cultural studies done within suicidal populations, the contributors - all established experts in both multicultural counseling and suicidology - expand the available empirical literature base in order to provide a deeper look into how culture can act as an important catalyst in suicidal intentions. Following theoretical overviews, the text focuses on six broad ethic groups classified in the literature (African American, American Indian, Asian American, European American, Hawaiian & Pacific Islander, and Hispanic), with a main chapter devoted to each, relating each culture to suicide research, highlighting specific variables within the culture that can influence suicide, and presenting appropriate treatment considerations. A final section of the book consists of practical applications within specific settings (therapy, outreach, schools, psychiatric services) and prevention and training issues.

here are over 38,000 suicide deaths each year in the United States alone, and the numbers in other countries suggest that suicide is a major public health problem around the world. A suicide leaves behind more victims than just the individual, as family, friends, co-workers, and the community can be impacted in many different and unique ways following a suicide. And yet there are very few professional resources that provide the necessary background, research, and tools to effectively work with the survivors of a suicide. This edited volume addresses the need for an up-to-date, professionally-oriented summary of the clinical and research literature on the impact of suicide bereavement on survivors. It is geared towards mental health professionals, grief counselors, clergy, and others who work with survivors in a professional capacity. Topics covered include the impact of suicide on survivors, interventions to provide bereavement care for survivors, examples of promising support programs for survivors, and developing a research, clinical, and programmatic agenda for survivors over the next 5 years and beyond.

The chapters of this volume were written for the purpose of surveying the field of intensive family therapy. The book is not a compilation of previously published articles; all of the chapters are original contributions written at the request of the editors. The structure of the volume was determined by the editors' experience with family therapy and their continuous exchange with other workers in the field through symposia, personal discussions, and, in most cases, direct observation of their work.

The authors provide a comprehensive picture of burial, mourning rituals, commemoration practices and veneration of the dead among the Negev Bedouin. A primary emphasis is the pivotal linkages between the living and the dead embodied in the intermediary role of healers, sorcerers, seers and other arbitrators between heaven and earth, who supplicate -- publicly and privately -- at the gravesite of chosen awliyah (deceased saints). This book brings together integrated findings of three scholars, based on decades of field work that combine close to 65 years of scrutiny. It maps out the locations and particularities of venerated tombs, the identity of the occupants and their individual abilities vis-a-vis the Almighty. Attitudes, beliefs and customs surrounding each gravesite, when combined on a longitudinal scale, reveal changes over time in beliefs and practices in grave worship and burial, mourning and condolence customs. Analysis of the data reveals that the dynamic of grave worship among the Negev Bedouin throws light on ancient traditions in a complex relationship with mainstream Islamic doctrine and the impact of modernity on Bedouin conduct and belief. The authors' observations and interviews with practitioners about their beliefs are compared and augmented with references that exist in the professional literature, including grave worship elsewhere in the Arab world. The Charm of Graves is essential reading for anthropologists, scholars of the sociology of religion, and students of Islam at university and popular levels. The topic has received only marginal attention in existing anthropological works and has been keenly awaited.

All societies have their own customs and beliefs surrounding death. In the West, traditional ways of mourning are disappearing, and although Western science has had a major impact on how people die, it has taught us little about the way to die or to grieve. Many whose work brings them into contact with the dying and the bereaved from Western and other cultures are at a loss to know how to offer appropriate and sensitive support. Death and Bereavement Across Cultures 2nd Edition is a handbook which meets the needs of doctors, nurses, social workers, hospital chaplains, counsellors and volunteers caring for patients with life-threatening illness and their families before and after bereavement. It is a practical guide explaining the religious and other differences commonly met with in multi-cultural societies when someone is dying or bereaved. In doing so readers may be surprised to find how much we can learn from other cultures about our own attitudes and assumptions about death. Written by international experts in the field the book: Describes the rituals and beliefs of major world religions; Explains their psychological and historical context; Shows how customs are changed by contact with the West; Considers the implications for the future The second edition includes new chapters that: explore how members of the health care professions perform roles formerly conducted by priests and shamans can cross the cultural gaps between different cultures and religions; consider the relevance of attitudes and assumptions about death for our understanding of religious and nationalist extremism and its consequences; discuss the Buddhist, Islamic and Christian ways of death. Death raises questions which science cannot answer. Whatever our personal beliefs we can all gain from learning how others view these ultimate problems. This book explores the richness of mourning traditions around the world with the aim of increasing the sensitivity and understanding which we all bring to the issue of death and bereavement.

Deliberately considering relevant theories put forward by earlier writers and examining them in the light of the research for this particular book, the author spent over 100 days attending funeral ceremonies and he attended 25 burial services. First published in 1962.

The authors provide a comprehensive picture of burial, mourning rituals, commemoration practices and veneration of the dead among the Negev Bedouin. A primary emphasis is the pivotal linkages between the living and the dead embodied in the intermediary role of healers, sorcerers, seers and other arbitrators between heaven and earth, who supplicate -- publicly and privately -- at the gravesite of chosen awliyah (deceased saints). This book brings together integrated findings of three scholars, based on decades of field work that combine close to 65 years of scrutiny. It maps out the locations and particularities of venerated tombs, the identity of the occupants and their individual abilities vis-a-vis the Almighty. Attitudes, beliefs and customs surrounding each gravesite, when combined on a longitudinal scale, reveal changes over time in beliefs and practices in grave worship and burial, mourning and condolence customs. Analysis of the data reveals that the dynamic of grave worship among the Negev Bedouin throws light on ancient traditions in a complex relationship with mainstream Islamic doctrine and the impact of modernity on Bedouin conduct and belief. The authors' observations and interviews with practitioners about their beliefs are compared and augmented with references that exist in the professional literature, including grave worship elsewhere in the Arab world. The Charm of Graves is essential reading for anthropologists, scholars of the sociology of religion, and students of Islam at university and popular levels. The topic has received only marginal attention in existing anthropological works and has been keenly awaited.

One of the first books to be published in the UK on bereavement, this ground-breaking study presents the results of a survey of widows in London. Focussing on younger women whose husbands had died the book deals first with grief and mourning then examines the consequences of bereavement through the help of relatives and friends and the changes it brings about to the widow's family life. Throughout the book the consequences of widowhood are discussed with relevance to psychological theory and to national policy. Originally published in 1958.

From the ritual object which functions as a substitute for the dead - thus acting as a medium for communicating with the 'other world' - to the representation of death, violence and suffering in media, or the use of online social networks as spaces of commemoration, media of various kinds are central to the communication and performance of death-related socio-cultural practices of individuals, groups and societies. This second volume of the Studies in Death, Materiality and Time series explores the ways in which such practices are subject to 're-mediation'; that is to say, processes by which well-known practices are re-presented in new ways through various media formats. Presenting rich, interdisciplinary new empirical case studies and fieldwork from the US and Europe, Asia, The Middle East, Australasia and Africa, Mediating and Remediating Death shows how different media forms contribute to the shaping and transformation of various forms of death and commemoration, whether in terms of their range and distribution, their relation to users or their roles in creating and maintaining communities. With its broad and multi-faceted focus on how uses of media can redraw the traditional boundaries of death-related practices and create new cultural realities, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in ritual and commemoration practices, the sociology and anthropology of death and dying, and cultural and media studies.

Disrupting, questioning and altering the taken-for-granted 'cosmos' of everyday life, the experiences of illness challenge the different ways in which social normalcy is remembered, maintained and expected. This book explores the manifold experiences of life threatening, infectious or non-curable illnesses that trouble the practices and relations of human and social life. Challenging a mere deficit-model of illness, it examines how the cosmopolitics of illness require and initiate an ethos that cares for difference and diversity. Eventful Bodies presents rich qualitative and ethnographic data alongside print and on-line media sources from Germany and North America, exploring case studies involving Alzheimer's disease, stroke and the global threat of infectious diseases such as SARS. The book engages with debates in cosmopolitics and exposes the agency of those overlooked by contemporary discourses of cosmopolitanism, thus developing a new theory of illness and delineating a novel empirical agenda and conceptual space for sociological and anthropological research. A rigorous examination of the changes wrought in the social world by illness and the implications of this for social and political theory, Eventful Bodies will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists, social and political theorists, geographers and scholars of science and technology studies, with interests in medical sociology, health, illness and the body.

Durkeim's book on suicide, first published in 1897, is widely regarded as a classic text, and is essential reading for any student of Durkheim's thought and sociological method. This book examines the continuing importance of Durkheim's methodology. The wide-ranging chapters cover such issues as the use of statistics, explanation of suicide, anomie and religion and the morality of suicide. It will be of vital interest to any serious scholar of Durkheim's thought and to the sociologist looking for a fresh methodological perspective.

Why did certain domestic murders fire the Victorian imagination? In her analysis of literary and cultural representations of this phenomenon across genres, Bridget Walsh traces how the perception of the domestic murderer changed across the nineteenth century and suggests ways in which the public appetite for such crimes was representative of wider social concerns. She argues that the portrayal of domestic murder did not signal a consensus of opinion regarding the domestic space, but rather reflected significant discontent with the cultural and social codes of behaviour circulating in society, particularly around issues of gender and class. Examining novels, trial transcripts, medico-legal documents, broadsides, criminal and scientific writing, illustration and, notably, Victorian melodrama, Walsh focuses on the relationship between the domestic sphere, so central to Victorian values, and the desecration of that space by the act of murder. Her book encompasses the gendered representation of domestic murder for both men and women as it tackles crucial questions related to Victorian ideas of nationhood, national health, political and social inequality, newspaper coverage of murder, unstable and contested models of masculinity and the ambivalent portrayal of the female domestic murderer at the fin de siecle.

This book, based on extensive original research, explores the various ways in which Japanese people think about death and how they approach the process of dying and death. It shows how new forms of funeral ceremonies have been developed by the funeral industry, how traditional grave burial is being replaced in some cases by the scattering of ashes and forest mortuary ritual, and how Japanese thinking on relationships, the value of life, and the afterlife are changing. Throughout, it assesses how these changes reflect changing social structures and social values.

Tree burial, a new form of disposal for the cremated remains of the dead, was created in 1999 by Chisaka Genpo, the head priest of a Zen Buddhist temple in northern Japan. Instead of a conventional family gravestone, perpetuating the continuity of a household and its identity, tree burial uses vast woodlands as cemeteries, with each burial spot marked by a tree and a small wooden tablet inscribed with the name of the deceased. Tree burial is gaining popularity, and is a highly-effective means of promoting the rehabilitation of Japanese forestland critically damaged by post-war government mismanagement. This book, based on extensive original research, explores the phenomenon of tree burial, tracing its development, discussing the factors which motivate Japanese people to choose tree burial, and examining the impact of tree burial on traditional views of death, memorialisation, and the afterlife. The author argues that non-traditional, non-ancestral modes of burial have become a means of negotiating new social orders and that this symbiosis of environmentalism and memorialisation corroborates the idea that graveyards are not only places for the containment of human remains and the memorialisation of the dead, but spaces where people (re)construct, challenge, and find new senses of belonging to the wider society in which they live. Throughout, the book demonstrates how the new practice fits with developing ideas of ecology, with the individual's corporality nourishing the earth and thus re-entering the cycle of life in nature.

Does a dying child understand death? How can we help children who are dying? Originally published in 1993, this book concerns a young girl, Rachel, terminally ill with leukaemia. The book describes a series of drawings she made and shows how they reveal her inner experience, how she became fully aware that she was dying and even came to accept death. The result is a moving and informative story that will be invaluable to caregivers and families with a dying child. It provides new understanding of the experience of a dying child and suggests practical strategies for coping.

As we live longer and die slower and differently than our ancestors, we have come to rely more and more on end-of-life caregivers. These workers navigate a changing landscape of old age and death that many of us have little preparation to encounter. "How We Die Now" is an absorbing and sensitive investigation of end-of-life issues from the perspectives of patients, relatives, medical professionals, and support staff.aKarla Erickson immersed herself in the daily life of workers and elders in a Midwestern community for over two years to explore important questions around the theme of OC how we die now.OCO She moves readers through and beyond the many fears that attend the social condition of old age and reveals the pleasures of living longer and the costs of slower, sometimes senseless ways of dying.aFor all of us who are grappling with the OC elder boom, OCO "How We Die Now" offers new ways of thinking about our longer lives."

For some, life's introduction to death and grief comes early, and when it does it can take many forms. Not only does Dealing with Dying, Death, and Grief during Adolescence tackle them all, it does so with David Balk's remarkable sensitivity to and deep knowledge of the pressures and opportunities adolescents face in their transition from childhood to adulthood. In seamless, jargon-free language, Balk brings readers up to date with what we know about adolescent development, because over time such changes form the backstory we need to comprehend the impact of death and bereavement in an adolescent's life. The book's later chapters break down the recent findings in the study of life-threatening illness and bereavement during adolescence. And, crucially, these chapters also examine interventions that assist adolescents coping with these difficulties. Clinicians will come away from this book with both a grounded understanding of adolescent development and the adolescent experience of death, and they'll also gain specific tools for helping adolescents cope with death and grief on their own terms. For any clinician committed to supporting adolescents facing some of life's most difficult experiences, this integrated, up-to-date, and deeply insightful text is simply the book to have. David E. Balk is professor in the department of health and nutrition sciences at Brooklyn College (CUNY), where he directs the graduate program in thanatology. He is the author of Adolescent Development: Early Through Late Adolescence, Helping the Bereaved College Student, and several other books on death and bereavement. He is also co-editor of the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Thanatology (Routledge, 2013).

"He was my best friend." "I feel like I've lost that one person I could always count on." Siblings know each other in ways friends and other blood relatives do not. They have shared bedrooms, bathrooms, holidays, family milestones, meals, and a way of growing up that those outside the family can never fully understand. The bond is intense, complicated, sometimes difficult, often wonderful and absolutely irreplaceable. When death interrupts what might have been a lovely, lifelong connection, the impact is tremendous. And yet, this loss is rarely the focus of research and is not well understood or recognised within society, leaving many siblings searching for appropriate support and validation. This book gives readers the opportunity to experience the intensity of this relationship through the eyes of three bereaved siblings. Their experiences, both before and after loss, are powerfully presented using a narrative style that allows the complexity and depth of their individual relationships to shine brightly. The author, a bereaved sibling herself, artfully weaves her story throughout, adding to the richness of the text. Through these collective stories, readers are invited to explore their own reactions and reflect on the many ways siblings affect each other over the long term. Bereaved siblings, clinicians, medical professionals, therapists, social workers, funeral directors, religious leaders, bereavement groups, and anyone who supports or knows a bereaved sibling will find benefit in this book. This highly readable text will both touch and inform readers.

Drawing on diverse theoretical and textual sources, The Gender of Suicide presents a critical study of the ways in which contemporary society understands suicide, exploring suicide across a range of key expert bodies of knowledge. With attention to Durkheim's founding study of suicide, as well as discourses within sociology, law, medicine, psy-knowledge and newsprint media, this book demonstrates that suicide cannot be understood without understanding how gender shapes it, and without giving explicit attention to the manner in which prevailing claims privilege some interpretations and experiences of suicide above others. Revealing the masculine and masculinist terms in which our current knowledge of suicide is constructed, The Gender of Suicide, explores the relationship between our grasp of suicide and problematic ideas connected to the body, agency, violence, race and sexuality. As such, it will appeal to sociologists and social theorists, as well as scholars of cultural studies, philosophy, law and psychology.

A scholar of Southern literature and culture, Jan Whitt has written a personal narrative about adoption, childhood abuse, and fifty years of searching for her family in rural Appalachia. A testament to the power of love and the resilience of the human spirit, Rain on a Strange Roof unflinchingly explores death and loss at the same time that it celebrates the transformative power of love and literature. An award-winning professor, Whitt teaches courses in American and British literature, literary journalism, media, and women's studies. Quoting from films, novels, and short stories about the American South, Whitt weaves a narrative about the necessity for human connection and the desire for home.

New York Times Bestseller A poignant love letter to Bloom's husband and a passionate outpouring of grief, In Love reaffirms the power and value of human relationships. In January 2020, Amy Bloom travelled with her husband Brian to Switzerland, where he was helped by Dignitas to end his life while Amy sat with him and held his hand. Brian was terminally ill and for the last year of his life Amy had struggled to find a way to support his wish to take control of his death, to not submerge 'into the darkness of an expiring existence'. Written with piercing insight and wit, In Love is Bloom's intimate, authentic and startling account of losing Brian, first slowly to the disease of Alzheimer's, and then on becoming a widow. It charts the anxiety and pain of the process that led them to Dignitas, while never avoiding the complex ethical problems that are raised by assisted death. 'Poignant, kind, funny and ultimately redemptive' - Alain de Botton, author of The Course of Love 'In Love is a thrillingly beautiful, laser-eyed book about love, life, mortality and, most remarkably, about the ways in which no one of the three can be separated from the others' - Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and A Home at the End of the World

The editors undertook this project to promote the International Conference on Death, Grief, and Bereavement in La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA. Throughout its history, the conference has attracted internationally known speakers. This book illustrates the quality of their presentations. Section One, "Professional Applications in End of Life Care," begins with Currier, Hammer, and Neimeyer's examination of the importance of the social network, including both religion and family, not just the individual, in working with those at the end of their lives. The authors analyse the impact of social support and its health implications. In Chapter 2, Parkes looks at the influence of child development on adult life and bereavement. Rather than simply showing how insecure child development affects loss as adults, he examines how insecure attachments in childhood can lead to extreme attachments to God, homes, territories, political leaders, and symbols and discusses interventions for these extreme attachments. Papadatou (Chapter 3) develops a model for professionals and caregivers who work with the dying. She suggests that those who give care to the dying also have multiple needs and also face suffering, examines the private world of professionals and what is healthy and what is unavoidable, and describes both functional and dysfunctional coping patterns used by professionals. Kobler (Chapter 4) uses case studies to explain how to develop and maintain relationships with children and their families in paediatric palliative care. She offers strategies for using rituals and ways to initiate and maintain relationships with children and their families. Thompson (Chapter 5) focuses on the effects of working in situations involving high levels of emotion and the stress that may result. He makes a strong case that such stress can do harm to individuals, groups, and whole organisations and offers a model for a more holistic approach that incorporates social and organisational strategies and practical ways to prevent and manage stress. Eves-Baine and colleagues (Chapter 6) examine the application of paediatric and adult-based principles to the newborn period. They discuss how to create the best situations for families when life-sustaining medical therapy has been withdrawn, how to support the family, and the ethical challenges that perinatal palliative care presents. The authors offer models for care through the journey of palliative and bereavement care. Section Two, "Facing End of Life and Its Care," begins with Gilbert's chapter presenting a strong argument that caregivers need to honour the multiple tracks that come with dying while maintaining a focus on the wishes of the dying person. He offers ways for the team to better meet the needs of the dying person. Koppleman (Chapter 8) follows the journey of a friend who faced death. It is a powerful story, told from the point of view of the dying in a scholarly fashion. Smith and Potter (Chapter 9) suggest that palliative care for the dying can be defined as offering "comfort care," both for those who are dying and for their loved ones. The authors present a model of the psycho-spiritual side of palliative care as a way of offering comfort to all those involved. Adams (Chapter 10) examines different methods of working with patients and families. It looks at the ways in which such work can be complicated by factors of geographic distance, differences in family reactions, differences in treatment plan concepts, and in meaning making. All of these factors may become stumbling blocks and may prevent the delivery of positive support. Pizzini (Chapter 11) looks at the experience of dying in prison from the perspective of inmates who are terminally ill, prison medical staff, and prison security staff. She discusses how to maintain dignity of the dying and a "good death" while in prison. McCord (Chapter 12) discusses attempts by hospice patients and others diagnosed with terminal illnesses to die either by their own hand or with physician assistance. She presents common risk factors, strategies to assess the degree of risk and possible plans for suicide and suicide postvention in the context of hospice. Section Three, "Cultural Considerations in End-of-Life Care" begins with The End of Life: Two Perspectives in which Robert G. Stevenson looks at two perspectives on the end of life that are not often examined in terms of their impact on the individual and his/her attitude toward this time. The two perspectives are that of adolescents, and that are shown in a military ceremony used in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Feu de Joie or Fire of Joy. In Chapter Fourteen, Janet McCord discusses suicide attempts by hospice patients and others diagnosed with terminal illnesses to die either by their own hand or with physician assistance. Connor's description of the need for hospice and palliative care around the world and the challenges of developing palliative care globally, and offers models that can be used around the world. Cox and Cox (Chapter 15) suggest ways to offer end-of-life care to Roman Catholics who do not fit the traditional model of hospice care and examine special needs, theology, and rituals. Cox and Sullivan (Chapter 16) offer suggestions on end-of-life care for American Indians, explaining cultural differences among American Indians and suggesting ways to improve care to a group that is generally neglected in hospice care. Smith (Chapter 17) looks at the cultural differences and understandings of Fundamentalist Christian views of a "good death" and the afterlife, ways to negotiate faith understandings that complicate end-of-life care, and ways to comfort individuals who may be marginalised because they do not share the theological views of the dying individual or key family members.

Examining the compelling and often poignant connection between women and the material culture of death, this collection focuses on the objects women make, the images they keep, the practices they use or are responsible for, and the places they inhabit and construct through ritual and custom. Women's material practices, ranging from wearing mourning jewelry to dressing the dead, stitching memorial samplers to constructing skull boxes, collecting funeral programs to collecting and studying diseased hearts, making and collecting taxidermies, and making sculptures honoring the death, are explored in this collection as well as women's affective responses and sentimental labor that mark their expected and unexpected participation in the social practices surrounding death and the dead. The largely invisible work involved in commemorating and constructing narratives and memorials about the dead--from family members and friends to national figures--calls attention to the role women as memory keepers for families, local communities, and the nation. Women have tended to work collaboratively, making, collecting, and sharing objects that conveyed sentiments about the deceased, whether human or animal, as well as the identity of mourners. Death is about loss, and many of the mourning practices that women have traditionally and are currently engaged in are about dealing with private grief and public loss as well as working to mitigate the more general anxiety that death engenders about the impermanence of life.

Throughout history, the nature and mystery of death has captivated artists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, and theologians. This eerie chronology ventures right to the borderlines of science and sheds light into the darkness. Here, topics as wide ranging as the Maya death gods, golems, and seances sit side by side with entries on zombies and quantum immortality. With the turn of every page, readers will encounter beautiful artwork, along with unexpected insights about death and what may lie beyond.

This book, based on extensive original research, explores the various ways in which Japanese people think about death and how they approach the process of dying and death. It shows how new forms of funeral ceremonies have been developed by the funeral industry, how traditional grave burial is being replaced in some cases by the scattering of ashes and forest mortuary ritual, and how Japanese thinking on relationships, the value of life, and the afterlife are changing. Throughout, it assesses how these changes reflect changing social structures and social values.