This book can enhance everyone's understanding of how women experience loss and grief, and how they transition to resolution. It is an invaluable resource to women and everyone who supports them-spouses, partners, and family members as well as community and government. Women's grief is often a complex phenomenon-a natural, normal experience, but one that can seriously impact everyone-female or male-at every stage of life. Understanding Loss and Grief for Women: A New Perspective on Their Pain and Healing provides a way to look at how women experience loss through the lens of their socially constructed roles, and in light of the theories and practice of grief therapy and support. The book begins by explaining the social construction of women's traditional, transitional, and modern/postmodern roles, and then addresses the social construction of grief theory and practice in past eras and modern society. Several case studies enable readers to see how social constructs shape women's responses to various causes of grief, such as the death of a spouse or partner, child, marriage (divorce), and career (retirement). The final section of the book examines the health impacts of grief, offers suggestions to ameliorate negative health impacts, and emphasizes how loss and grief for women can be used as opportunities for self-growth. This book serves all members of the general population as well as educators, academics, scientists, and students of disciplines such as psychology, psychotherapy, medicine, sociology, and women's studies. It will enable all women to better understand, deal with, and heal from their loss and grief experience. Male readers will empathize with what their spouses/partners, mothers, grandmothers, siblings, and friends are experiencing in loss and grief and understand how to support healthy transition through grief to resolution. The community at large and care providers will learn how to create a more nurturing and supportive environment for women's grief response. Explicates the socially constructed roles of women, in the past and in modern society, to illustrate what has been considered "appropriate" expression and response to loss and grief for women, and to enable a unique understanding the phenomenal loss experience for women Presents an invaluable framework, as a scaffolding, that allows readers to interrogate their own and others' experiences of loss in a novel, more in-depth way-one that supports improved practice in the helping professions Includes women's real-life stories that tell their truths of the loss experience and how grief worked through them in transitioning to resolution Provides seminal information to professional grief counselors, physicians, nurses, clinical psychologists, and psychiatric social workers, as well as students of psychology, sociology, medicine, public health, and women's studies Allows family members, friends, or partners to better understand what a woman who is experiencing loss and grief is feeling, and instructs how to support healthy transition through grief to resolution

In caring for America's aging population, emphasis on maintaining elders in the community, preferable at home, with appropriate support services. But what of those older persons who are at home, without a caring network of relatives or friends? What of elders who are undernourished, under- or over-medicated, visually handicapped, hard of hearing, or otherwise disabled? Many of these older people may be unaware of their need for help, or are well aware of their situation but deliberately hiding their needs from others for fear of being "a burden" or of losing their freedom.
This important book brings together an impressive array of experts who seek to assist family and friends in recognizing the danger signs that surround an at-risk elder, and points out the vital, but often subtle, distinctions between types of behavior that give cause for worry and those which can best be described as idiosyncratic. The essays offer suggestions for appropriate assistance that maintains respect for elder autonomy and freedom.

This valuable guide shows how hospice can provide compassionate, palliative care to meet the medical, psychological, and spiritual needs of persons with AIDS and those who love them; it offers a detailed discussion of the history and philosophy of hospice care; the medical challenges and psychological issues involved in the treatment of AIDS patients during the painful, debilitating final stages of the disease; and the costs of medical and pain-relieving care. Hospice is shown to be more attuned to the special needs of AIDS patients as well as far more cost-effective in most cases than acute-care hospitals. Patients loved ones, and all advocates of the rights and dignity of persons with AIDS will find "Among Friends" an indispensable resource.

In caring for America's aging population, emphasis is frequently given to maintaining elders in the community, preferably in their own homes, with appropriate supportive services. But what of those older persons who are at home and without a network of relatives or friends who are aware of the often life-threatening problems they face every day? What of elders who are undernourished, under- or over-medicated, visually handicapped, hard of hearing, or otherwise disabled? Many of these older people may be unaware of their need for help, or are well aware of their specific circumstances but deliberately hide their needs from others for fear of being "a burden" or of losing their freedom. This important new book brings together a variety of authors who seek to assist family and friends in recognizing the danger signs that surround an at-risk elder, while making vital distinctions between those types of behavior that give cause for worry and those that can best be described as idiosyncratic. The essays offer thoughtful suggestions for appropriate assistance by caregivers and interested parties while at the same time respecting the autonomy and independence of the elderly.