Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Psychology, health and illness
- Adolescent lifestyle
- Age and physical functioning
- Age and cognitive functioning
- Ageing and health
- Architecture and health
- Attributions and health
- Childhood influences on health
- Children's perceptions of illness and death
- Coping with bereavement
- Coping with chronic illness
- Coping with chronic pain
- Coping with death and dying
- Coping with stressful medical procedures
- Cultural and ethnic factors in health
- Delay in seeking help
- Diet and health
- Disability
- Emotional expression and health
- Expectations and health
- Gender issues and women's health
- The health belief model
- Health-related behaviours: common factors
- Hospitalization in adults
- Hospitalization in children
- Hostility and Type A behaviour in coronary artery disease
- Lay beliefs about health and illness
- Life events and health
- Men's health
- Noise: effects on health
- Pain: a multidimensional perspective
- Perceived control
- Personality and health
- Physical activity and health
- Placebos
- Psychoneuroimmunology
- Psychosomatics
- Quality of life
- Religion and health
- Risk perception and health behaviour
- Self-efficacy in health functioning
- Sexual risk behaviour
- Sleep and health
- Social support and health
- Socioeconomic status and health
- Stigma
- Stress and health
- Symptom perception
- Theory of planned behaviour
- Transtheoretical model of behaviour change
- Unemployment and health
- Brain imaging and function
- Communication assessment
- Coping assessment
- Diagnostic interviews and clinical practice
- Disability assessment
- Health cognition assessment
- Health status assessment
- Illness cognition assessment
- IQ testing
- Assessment of mood
- Neuropsychological assessment
- Neuropsychological assessment of attention and executive functioning
- Neuropsychological assessment of learning and memory
- Pain assessment
- Patient satisfaction assessment
- Psychoneuroimmunology assessments
- Qualitative assessment
- Quality of life assessment
- Social support assessment
- Stress assessment
- Behaviour therapy
- Biofeedback
- Cognitive behaviour therapy
- Community-based interventions
- Counselling
- Group therapy
- Health promotion
- Hypnosis
- Motivational interviewing
- Neuropsychological rehabilitation
- Pain management
- Physical activity interventions
- Psychodynamic psychotherapy
- Psychosocial care of the elderly
- Relaxation training
- Self-management interventions
- Social support interventions
- Stress management
- Worksite interventions
- Adherence to treatment
- Attitudes of health professionals
- Breaking bad news
- Burnout in health professionals
- Communicating risk
- Healthcare professional–patient communication
- Healthcare work environments
- Informed consent
- Interprofessional education in essence
- Medical decision-making
- Medical interviewing
- Patient-centred healthcare
- Patient safety and iatrogenesis
- Patient satisfaction
- Psychological support for healthcare professionals
- Reassurance
- Screening in healthcare: general issues
- Shiftwork and health
- Stress in health professionals
- Surgery
- Teaching communication skills
- Written communication
- Medical topics
- Index
- References
Coping with death and dying
from Psychology, health and illness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Psychology, health and illness
- Adolescent lifestyle
- Age and physical functioning
- Age and cognitive functioning
- Ageing and health
- Architecture and health
- Attributions and health
- Childhood influences on health
- Children's perceptions of illness and death
- Coping with bereavement
- Coping with chronic illness
- Coping with chronic pain
- Coping with death and dying
- Coping with stressful medical procedures
- Cultural and ethnic factors in health
- Delay in seeking help
- Diet and health
- Disability
- Emotional expression and health
- Expectations and health
- Gender issues and women's health
- The health belief model
- Health-related behaviours: common factors
- Hospitalization in adults
- Hospitalization in children
- Hostility and Type A behaviour in coronary artery disease
- Lay beliefs about health and illness
- Life events and health
- Men's health
- Noise: effects on health
- Pain: a multidimensional perspective
- Perceived control
- Personality and health
- Physical activity and health
- Placebos
- Psychoneuroimmunology
- Psychosomatics
- Quality of life
- Religion and health
- Risk perception and health behaviour
- Self-efficacy in health functioning
- Sexual risk behaviour
- Sleep and health
- Social support and health
- Socioeconomic status and health
- Stigma
- Stress and health
- Symptom perception
- Theory of planned behaviour
- Transtheoretical model of behaviour change
- Unemployment and health
- Brain imaging and function
- Communication assessment
- Coping assessment
- Diagnostic interviews and clinical practice
- Disability assessment
- Health cognition assessment
- Health status assessment
- Illness cognition assessment
- IQ testing
- Assessment of mood
- Neuropsychological assessment
- Neuropsychological assessment of attention and executive functioning
- Neuropsychological assessment of learning and memory
- Pain assessment
- Patient satisfaction assessment
- Psychoneuroimmunology assessments
- Qualitative assessment
- Quality of life assessment
- Social support assessment
- Stress assessment
- Behaviour therapy
- Biofeedback
- Cognitive behaviour therapy
- Community-based interventions
- Counselling
- Group therapy
- Health promotion
- Hypnosis
- Motivational interviewing
- Neuropsychological rehabilitation
- Pain management
- Physical activity interventions
- Psychodynamic psychotherapy
- Psychosocial care of the elderly
- Relaxation training
- Self-management interventions
- Social support interventions
- Stress management
- Worksite interventions
- Adherence to treatment
- Attitudes of health professionals
- Breaking bad news
- Burnout in health professionals
- Communicating risk
- Healthcare professional–patient communication
- Healthcare work environments
- Informed consent
- Interprofessional education in essence
- Medical decision-making
- Medical interviewing
- Patient-centred healthcare
- Patient safety and iatrogenesis
- Patient satisfaction
- Psychological support for healthcare professionals
- Reassurance
- Screening in healthcare: general issues
- Shiftwork and health
- Stress in health professionals
- Surgery
- Teaching communication skills
- Written communication
- Medical topics
- Index
- References
Summary
Death is, perhaps, the ultimate test which we face as patients, relatives and members of the caring professions. All of us have to cope with it and, no matter how experienced we become, the coping is seldom easy. Death is often a loss but it can also be a time of peaceful transition. It may represent failure or success, ending or beginning, disaster or triumph. We may try to improve our ways of caring but, whatever the circumstances, death must never become routine.
In recent years, the psychological care of the dying and the bereaved has improved greatly, largely thanks to the work of the Hospices and the various organizations, such as Cruse – Bereavement Care, which provide counselling to the bereaved. Hospices have always seen the unit of care as being the family, which includes the patient, rather than the patient with the family as an optional extra to be taken on if we have time.
The field is a large one and it will not be possible, in the space available here, to give more than an outline of some of the major issues or to review the scientific and clinical research which underlies the theory and practice which I shall describe. The interested reader will find this type of information in the books by Kauffman (2002) and by Kissane and Bloch (2002), also in my own books, Parkes (1996) and Parkes and Markus (1998).
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- Information
- Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine , pp. 55 - 58Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007