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OMEGA: The Journal of Death and Dying |
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Comments from the editor Kenneth J. Doka
As the previous editorials have indicated, there has been a renaissance in our understandings of grief. We have developed new
models and concepts in the study of grief that have widened our perspectives about the ways individuals experience and adapt to loss. While much of this work needs elaboration and verification in research, there are nonetheless exciting developments that
presage a considerable agenda for research.
Unfortunately, progress in the ways we understand the dying process has been more incremental. This is surprising considering
the remarkable social movements that continue to change the ways that people in North America experience death. Hospice,
for example, only thirty-five years ago, did not exist in the United States. Now virtually every community has a hospice
program. Similarly there have been great advances in palliative care. What are missing are conceptual frameworks that help us
understand the experience of dying and the ways that individuals and families adapt. There are some exceptions. Byock
provided a vision of what it means to die well. Davies has done some excellent
work on how patients and families experience progressive terminal illness. Corr and I have offered task models of the processes of dying and life-threatening illness. And
Rando has suggested refinements to the study of anticipatory grief and mourning.
Yet much more can be done. For example, psychological reconstructivism and its’ sociological cousin, symbolic
interactionism, have made fruitful contributions to the study of grief. These approaches have addressed that grieving individuals and families
reconstruct meaning and redefine self after a significant loss. It would be interesting to apply this approach to the study of
dying. How do individuals and families give meaning to the dying process? How do conceptions of self change as individuals
experience life-threatening illness? While there is some consideration of these questions, most notably in the work of
Bluebond-Langner, clearly more needs to be done.
In fact there needs to be a renaissance in research on the dying process.
OMEGA would welcome articles that contribute to
that renaissance.
Go to OMEGA: The Journal of Death and Dying
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