This study explores the female experience of death in early modern England. By tracing attitudes towards gender through the occasion of death, it advances our understanding of the construction of femininity in the period. Becker illustrates how dying could be a positive event for a woman, and for her mourners, in terms of how it allowed her to be defined, enabled and elevated. The first part of the book gives a cultural and historical overview of death in early modern England, examining the means by which human mortality was confronted, and how the fear of death and dying could be used to uphold the mores of society. Becker explores particularly the female experience of death, and how women used the deathbed as a place of power from which to bestow dying maternal blessings, or leave instructions and advice for their survivors. The second part of the study looks at 'good' and 'bad' female deaths. The author discusses the motivation behind the reporting of the deaths and the veracity of such accounts, and highlights the ways in which they could be used for religious, political and patriarchal purposes. The third section of the book considers how death could, paradoxically, liberate a woman. In this section Becker evaluates the opportunity for female involvement in dying and posthumous rituals, including funeral rites and sermons, commemorative and autobiographical writing and literary legacies. While accounts of dying women largely underpinned the existing patriarchy, the experience of dying allowed some women to express themselves by allowing them to utilise an established male discourse. This opportunity for expression, along with the power of the deathbed, are the focus for this study.

This book is a guide to making and carrying out the psychological decision to kill oneself or, if one so decide, to continue living. It focuses on the decision to commit suicide than on the decision to continue living.

George P. Smith's "Palliative Care and End-of-Life Decisions" completes a Bioethics-Health Care epistemology begun in 1989, which addresses the specific issue of managing palliative care at the end-stage of life. Smith argues forcefully that in order to palliate the whole person (encompassing physical and psychological states), an ethic of adjusted care requires recognition of a fundamental right to avoid cruel and unusual suffering from terminal illness. Specifically, this book urges wider consideration and use of terminal sedation as efficacious medical care and as a reasonable procedure in order to safeguard a 'right' to a dignified death. The principle of medical futility is seen as a proper construct for implementing this process.
The state legislative responses of California, Vermont, and Washington in enacting Death with Dignity legislation - allowing those with end-stage terminal illness to receive pharmacological assistance in ending their own lives - is held by Smith to be not only commendable, but the proper response for enlightened state action.

It aims to provide the practitioner with a description of depression, an explanation of factors that contribute to mood disorders and guidance on their assessment and treatment in adolescence. In addition, it aims to provide a framework for the assessment and management of adolescence that have threatened or attempted suicide.

This interdisciplinary collection presents valuable discourse and reflection on the nature of a good death. Bringing together a leading judge and other legal scholars, philosophers, social scientists, practitioners and parents who present varying accounts of a good death, the chapters draw from personal experience as well as policy, practice and academic analysis. Covering themes such as patients' rights to determine their own good death, considering their best interests when communication becomes difficult and the role and responsibilities of health professionals, the book outlines how ethical healthcare might be achieved when dealing with assisted suicide by organizations and how end of life services in general might be improved. It will be of interest to students and academics working the area of medical law and ethics as well as health professionals and policy-makers.

The social and religious constraints of their time may have prevented John Milton, Thomas Gray, and Alfred Tennyson from conscious expression or even unconscious recognition of the true extent of their love and devotion to their young male friends, but it lies at the heart of their emotional lives and poetry. Connected by the extraordinary coincidence that each of their loved ones died young, Milton, Gray, and Tennyson are also connected by the male-love elegies that sprang from their grief. This work examines the relationships between John Milton and Charles Diodati, Thomas Gray and Richard West, and Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam through a critical study of Miltons "Epitaphium Damonis, " Grays "Elegy, " and Tennysons "In Memoriam." It shows how their concepts of otherness and difference from the people around them provided comfort after the loss of their loved ones. It discusses Miltons use of Latin to mourn his friend and screen the most resounding expressions of his love while keeping at bay those not ready to understand his concept of otherness, how Gray used both Latin and the vernacular to express his grief while conforming to social and religious constraints by also addressing larger concerns; and Tennysons ability to use the vernacular with complete security to speak out and yet hold back private thoughts about the person he loved more than almost any other in his life.

The make-up of the contemporary nation-state is increasingly multiethnic and statistics show that in many cases no one group is numerically the largest. Interethnic relations are given global visibility by the media while much that happens among different groups depends on context. Editors John D. Morgan (King's College, London) and Pittu Laungani (South Bank and Manchester Universities, England) have gathered leading international authorities to produce Death and Bereavement Around the World the first of a five-volume presentation and analysis of the ways different peoples experience dying and grief. Effective bereavement care requires a knowledge of an individual's physical, social, educational, and spiritual existence since the expressions of grief and the needs that emerge vary widely from one to another and are subject to past experiences, cultural expectations, personal beliefs, and relationships. An individual's identity comes from a sense of personal uniqueness; solidarity with group ideals; continuity with the past, present and future; and from the culture by which an individual is raised or adopted. This first volume discusses the major religious traditions of the world and how they help followers deal with the fundamentals of life.

Rabbi Ronald H. Isaacs' highly acclaimed series of Every Person's Guides provides modern readers with the essential information necessary to grasp the topics he explores. A gifted educator, Rabbi Isaacs understands the needs of his readers as he provides them with a wonderful balance between background material and the details of religious practice. While Rabbi Isaacs is not offering halachic (legal) guides, he does give modern readers both the fundamentals as well as rich supportive materials. Whether Rabbi Isaacs is walking his readers through a Jewish holy day or a topic like death and dying, he does so in a user-friendly, warm and upbeat style. This new series by one of America's most prolific Jewish writers is destined to become a classic.

This is a comprehensive account of the psychology of death and bereavement, which places the subject within the contexts of the major world religions and their associated mourning and funeral customs. Clearly written, well referenced and carefully organized, the book examines the thinking of Freud and Jung and of modern psychiatrists, and also discusses those aspects of death - bereavement visions, euthanasia, grief for a pet and suicide - which are not covered elsewhere.The second edition has enabled the contents to be updated and enlarged. There are five new chapters, including one dealing with the scientific assessment of death: another looks at the psychological insights provided by Shakespeare, whilst a third deals with the beliefs and customs of minority groups - the Bahais, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Quakers, Spiritualists and Seventh-day Adventists. The text is highly accessible and uses case histories to bridge the gap between theory and experience in an novel and creative way.

The dead are potent and omnipresent in modern Indonesia. Presidents and peasants alike meditate before sacred graves to exploit the power they confer, and mediums do good business curing the sick by interpreting the wishes of deceased forebears. Among non-Muslims there are ritual burials of the bones of the dead in monuments both magnificent and modest. By promoting dead heroes to a nationalist pantheon, regions and ethnic groups establish their place within the national story.Although much has been written about the local forms of the scriptural religions to which modern Indonesians are required by law to adhere - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism - this is the first book to assess the indigenous systems of belief in the spirits of ancestors. Sometimes these systems are condemned in the name of the formal religions, but more often the potent dead coexist as a private dimension of everyday religious practice.A unique team of anthropologists, historians and literary scholars from Europe, Australia and North America demonstrate the continuing importance of the potent dead for understanding contemporary Indonesia. At the same time, they help us understand historic processes of conversion to Islam and Christianity by examining the continuing interactions of the spirit world with formal religion.

This volume explores the fascinating phenomenon of noble death through pagan, Jewish and Christian sources. Today's society is uncomfortable with death, and willingly submitting to a violent and ostentatious death in public is seen as particularly shocking and unusual. Yet classical sources give a different view, with public self-sacrifice often being applauded. The Romans admired a heroic end in the battlefield or the arena, suicide in the tradition of Socrates was something laudable, and Christians and Jews alike faithfully commemorated their heroes who died during religious persecutions. The cross-cultural approach and wide chronological range of this study make it valuable for students and scholars of ancient history, religion and literature.

Every year in the UK over 10,000 babies die before birth or shortly afterwards. For the parents, the grief is hard to bear. In this book, parents who have lost a baby tell their stories. They speak about what happened, how they felt, how they have been helped by others and how they helped themselves.
Using letters from and interviews with many bereaved parents, Nancy Kohner and Alix Henley have written a book which offers understanding of what it means to lose a baby and the grief that follows. When a Baby Dies also contains valuable information about why a baby dies, hospital practices, the process of grieving, sources of support, and the care parents need in future pregnancies.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203164881

Every year in the UK over 10,000 babies die before birth or shortly afterwards. For the parents, the grief is hard to bear. In this book, parents who have lost a baby tell their stories. They speak about what happened, how they felt, how they have been helped by others and how they helped themselves.
Using letters from and interviews with many bereaved parents, Nancy Kohner and Alix Henley have written a book which offers understanding of what it means to lose a baby and the grief that follows. When a Baby Dies also contains valuable information about why a baby dies, hospital practices, the process of grieving, sources of support, and the care parents need in future pregnancies.

Opening with a useful overview of the literature on user involvement, the book goes on to look at the policy and professional context within which user involvement is undertaken, in particular user involvement in palliative care. In this section, the authors discuss two key concepts - palliative care and empowerment - and analyse the role of self-help groups and new information and communication technologies in this context. The last section of the book focuses on the detailed narratives of people coping with three life-threatening illnesses - cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease - and in this way the views and experiences of the 'user' are brought into play to critique current policy and practice
Too Ill to Talk? addresses a current health services issue in a refreshingly critical manner. It challenges the assumption that user involvement is either easy to achieve or that it is necessarily welcomed by all parties. It will be valuable reading for students on health studies courses, health professionals and policy makers in health and social care.

The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture investigates the emergence and meaning of the cult of death. Over the last three decades, Halloween has grown to rival Christmas in its popularity. Dark tourism has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry. "Corpse chic" and "skull style" have entered mainstream fashion, while elements of gothic, horror, torture porn, and slasher movies have streamed into more conventional genres. Monsters have become pop culture heroes: vampires, zombies, and serial killers now appeal broadly to audiences of all ages. This book breaks new ground by viewing these phenomena as aspects of a single movement and documenting its development in contemporary Western culture. This book links the mounting demand for images of violent death with dramatic changes in death-related social rituals. It offers a conceptual framework that connects observations of fictional worlds-including The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, and the Harry Potter series-with real-world sociocultural practices, analyzing the aesthetic, intellectual, and historical underpinnings of the cult of death. It also places the celebration of death in the context of a longstanding critique of humanism and investigates the role played by 20th-century French theory, posthumanism, transhumanism, and the animal rights movement in shaping the current antihumanist atmosphere. This timely, thought-provoking book will appeal to scholars of culture, film, literature, anthropology, and American and Russian studies, as well as general readers seeking to understand a defining phenomenon of our age.

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. This book will be of vital interest to any serious scholar of Durkheim's thought and to the sociologist looking for a fresh methodological perspective.

eBook available with sample pages: 020345927X

This book is a brief but comprehensive survey of research, writings, and professional practices concerned with death and dying. It is interdisciplinary and eclectic--medical, psychological, religious, philosophical, artistic, demographics, bereavement, and widowhood are all considered--but with an emphasis on psychological aspects. A variety of viewpoints and research findings on topics subsumed under "thanatology" receive thorough consideration. Questions, activities, and projects at the end of each chapter enhance reflection and personalize the material.
This fourth edition features material on:
* moral issues and court cases concerned with abortion and euthanasia;
* the widespread problem of AIDS and other deadly diseases;
* the tragedies occasioned by epidemics, starvation, and war; and
* the resumption of capital punishment in many states.
The book's enhanced multicultural tone reflects the increased economic, social, and physical interdependency among the nations of the world.
Topics receiving increased attention in the fourth edition are: terror management; attitudes and practices concerning death; cross-cultural concepts of afterlife; gallows humor, out-of-body experiences; spiritualism; mass suicide; pet and romantic death; euthanasia; right to die; postbereavement depression; firearm deaths in children; children's understanding of death; child, adolescent, adult, and physician-assisted suicide; religious customs and death; confronting death; legal issues in death, dying and bereavement; death education; death music; creativity and death; longevity; broken heart phenomenon; beliefs in life after death; new definitions of death; children's acceptance of a parent's death; terminal illness; and the politics of death and dying.

With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs, and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic, and theoretical aspects of the ways in which popular culture understands, represents, and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music, and advertising.

Taking as its focus a highly emotive area of study, The Dying Process draws on the experiences of daycare and hospice patients to provide a forceful new analysis of the period of decline prior to death.
Placing the bodily realities of dying very firmly centre stage and questioning the ideology central to the modern hospice movement of enabling patients to 'live until they die', Julia Lawton shows how our concept of a 'good death' is open to interpretation. Her study examines the non-negotiable effects of a patient's bodily deterioration on their sense of self and, in so doing, offers a powerful new perspective in embodiment and emotion in death and dying.
A detailed and subtle ethnographic study, The Dying Process engages with a range of deeply complex and ethically contentious issues surrounding the care of dying patients in hospices and elsewhere.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203130278

A source of comfort and expert guidance

Like a knowing and sympathetic companion, this unique journal is designed to help you work through the painful emotions, thoughts, and memories that surface when you have lost someone dear to you. Written by a professional counselor, this book supplies you with important information about grief and the grieving process. But, more importantly, it invokes the healing power of writing to provide you with a means for collecting your thoughts, sorting out your feelings, and taking an active part in your own recovery.

Acclaim for The Healing Journey Through Grief . . .

"A wonderful guide for the bereaved. This journal not only provides valuable information, but it also allows the griever to make his or her own way through the painful mourning process." —Catherine Sanders, PhD, Author of Grief: The Mourning After, Surviving Grief . . . and Learning to Live Again, and How to Survive the Loss of a Child

Other books in the Healing Journey series include:

• The Healing Journey, 208 pp., Paper (0-471-24712-X)
• The Healing Journey for Couples, 288 pp., Paper (0-471-25470-3)
• The Healing Journey Through Divorce, 264 pp., Paper (0-471-29575-2)

Taking as its focus a highly emotive area of study, The Dying Process draws on the experiences of daycare and hospice patients to provide a forceful new analysis of the period of decline prior to death.
Placing the bodily realities of dying very firmly centre stage and questioning the ideology central to the modern hospice movement of enabling patients to 'live until they die', Julia Lawton shows how our concept of a 'good death' is open to interpretation. Her study examines the non-negotiable effects of a patient's bodily deterioration on their sense of self and, in so doing, offers a powerful new perspective in embodiment and emotion in death and dying.
A detailed and subtle ethnographic study, The Dying Process engages with a range of deeply complex and ethically contentious issues surrounding the care of dying patients in hospices and elsewhere.

At least 5 million people die each year from injuries, and about half the deaths in the 10-24 age group are accountable to them. This is a major health problem for which a number of strategies for prevention and control can be developed.
This book presents a series of the plenary and state-of-the-art presentations from the 5th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Control. There is a focus on transportation, workplace, sport and leisure, and domestic sectors, and an exploration of the legal, medical, environmental, safety and governmental issues which play a part in the subject.
Practitioners and researchers in a variety of activities, including epidemiology and public health, occupational health and safety, ergonomics and product design, medicine, criminology, engineering and physical sciences, and the behavioural sciences, should find this a useful and challenging work.

This work features articles by leading educators and clinicians in the field of grief and bereavement. The chapters entitled "Voices" are the writings of children and adolescents. It includes a comprehensive resource list of national organizations and a useful bibliography of age-appropriate literature for children and adolescents.

Drawing upon a rare and highly original ethnography of contemporary mortuary practices, Representations of Death takes the reader through the medical, bureaucratic, commercial and ritual aspects of death Going behind the scenes at hospitals, funeral parlours, crematoria and cemeteries, as well as holding poignant, in-depth interviews with bereaved women, Bradbury has been able to illuminate the very different perspectives of the deathwork professional and the grieving relative. Illustrated with stunning photographs, this fascinating book makes a significant contribution to the growing literature in death studies.

Drawing upon a rare and highly original ethnography of contemporary mortuary practices, Representations of Death takes the reader through the medical, bureaucratic, commercial and ritual aspects of death. Going behind the scenes at hospitals, funeral parlours, crematoria and cemeteries, as well as holding poignant, in-depth interviews with bereaved women, Bradbury has been able to illuminate the very different perspectives of the deathwork professional and the grieving relative. Illustrated with stunning photographs, this fascinating book makes a significant contribution to the growing literature in death studies.