Overview Definitions of Terms Grief Bereavement Mourning Types of Grief Reactions Anticipatory Grief Normal or Common Grief Stage Models of Normal Grief Patterns of Complicated Grief Prolonged or Complicated Grief as a Mental Disorder Risk Factors for Complicated Grief and Other Negative Bereavement Outcomes Situational: Expected or Unexpected Death Personal: Personality Characteristics Persona...

Online identities survive the deaths of those they represent, leaving friends and families to struggle with the appropriate ways to incorporate these identities into the practices of grief and mourning, raising important questions. How are practices of online memorialization connected to conventional rituals of grief and mourning? What is the role of online digital identity post-mortem? How do ...

A large number of Aboriginal people await transplantation, and reluctance to donate organs has been noted among Aboriginal people. The purpose of this study was to explore the values and beliefs regarding organ donation of Coast Salish people living in British Columbia, Canada. Interviews were held with 14 people (8 women and 6 men) ranging in age from 25 to 63 years. Contextual themes were: la...

Four experiments tested the novel hypothesis that ritualistic behavior potentiates and enhances ensuing consumption--an effect found for chocolates, lemonade, and even carrots. Experiment 1 showed that participants who engaged in ritualized behavior, compared with those who did not, evaluated chocolate as more flavorful, valuable, and deserving of behavioral savoring. Experiment 2 demonstrated ...

Traditional healing rituals in many parts of the world seem to derive from a model of cyclical renewal provided in the first instance by menstruation. Health is seen as dependent upon a correct balance between polar opposite states such as 'heat' and 'cold','dryness' and 'wetness' etc. Nature seems to achieve such balance by alternating regularly between opposites such as night and day, wet sea...

Mary Douglas argues that, ‘There are some things we cannot experience without ritual.’ Ex-prisoner reintegration may be one of them. The punishment process involves an inordinate amount of ritual behavior, from the drama of the courtroom to the elaborate de-individuation processes involved in institutionalization. Durkheim argues that these rituals serve a distinct purpose for society: engender...

The utilitarian construct of two alternative criteria of human death increases the supply of transplantable organs at the end of life. Neither the neurological criterion (heart-beating donation) nor the circulatory criterion (non-heart-beating donation) is grounded in scientific evidence but based on philosophical reasoning. A utilitarian death definition can have unintended consequences for dy...

Since primordial times, vultures have been competing with man for animal carcasses. One of these vultures, the once widespread bearded vulture ( Gypaetus barbatus ), has the habit of bathing its polluted feathers and skin in red iron oxide - ochre - tainted water puddles. Why? Primitive man may have tried to find out and may have discovered its advantages. Red ochre, which has accompanied human...

Thanks to such works as Keith Thomas's Religion and the decline ofmagic (1973), Lawrence Stone's The family, sex and marriage in England, 1500-1800 (1977), Ronald Hutton's The rise andfall ofmerry England: the ritual year, 1400-1700 (1994), and Anthony Fletcher's Gender, sex and subordination in England 1500-1800 (1995), the cultural and social history of the early modem period is blessed with ...