When Children Die: Improving Palliative and End-of-life Care for Children and Their Families

The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

PhotoTherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums

This study investigates the psychological effects of participation in Death Education (DeEd) by middle school children in two towns in northeast Italy in which suicides occur to a greater extent than in the rest of the region. The aims of the project “Beyond the Wall” were inherent to the prevention of suicide, address existential issues and enhance the meaning of life through positive intentions for the future and reflection on mortality. It involved eight classes (150 students in four classes in the experimental group; 81 in four classes in the control group) engaging with films, workgroup activities, photovoice and psychodrama. The constructs of resilience, emotional competency and psychological well-being were monitored with the Resilience Scale for Adolescents, the Hopelessness Scale for Children, the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children and the Stirling Children’s Well-being Scale. The DeEd intervention was found to be significantly related to some of the variables investigated, improving the students’ ability to recognise emotions and communicate them verbally while maintaining stable initial characteristics, such as psychological well-being and positive expectations for the future.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2398/pdf

Beyond the Wall: Death Education at Middle School as Suicide Prevention.

This thesis examines a dominant way of thinking that presents itself as control Such thinking prevails in education, especially where societies are driven by achievement and characterised by the discourse of efficiency I suggest that this way of thinking inevitably blocks the other – that is, the radically other, which cannot be absorbed or assimilated into the same The thesis explores ways in which what escapes our grip has an important bearing on education, including on such matters as the consideration of curriculum content Art and the humanities will be seen as significant spaces where alterity presents and expresses itself, asking for our singular response Works of art, for example, require us to be sensitive to what we cannot fully comprehend or contain; they unsettle and even disturb our accustomed ways of thinking Poetic language is the exemplar: characteristically, it resists rigidity and consolidation, and cannot be reduced to merely instrumental purposes It breaks the closed circle of economies of thought that would insulate themselves from an outside The aim of this thesis is, by way of exploring such language, to search for and preserve places for alterity, as places that education and philosophy can find themselves again I attempt to show that acknowledgement of the other should condition not only the practice of teaching and learning but also the practicalities of our social and political lives Recovering the vitality of language will be seen as a resisting force against the impersonal, neutralised, and neutered language of control In the end, it is through this that we can affirm the tensions and aporetic problems we encounter in our lives, particularly in teaching Such affirmation enables the recovery of responsibility in what we say and do, where this is less to do with seeking security and much more a matter of faith

Poetics of Alterity: Education, Art, Politics

The censorship of death and dying has removed the "memento mori" practices, and in order to reintroduce this practice, some "Before I die" projects have been increasingly implemented. Running in parallel, in the syllabi of social service and psychology students, some experiences of death education has commenced. This study illustrates the results of a qualitative research conducted on the "Before I die I want to …" Polaroid® Project (BIDIWT), which is divided into two phases. The first phase entails an analysis of the wishes collected from the United States, Japan, India, and Italy. The second phase refers to the analysis of the captions of the BIDIWT realized from two groups of undergraduates, with regard to the effect of such experience on their religiosity, representation of death, and fear of death.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2055102918809759

“Before I die I want to …”: An experience of death education among university students of social service and psychology

The article presents the results of a research intervention aimed at exploring the differences among some factors (death anxiety, ontological representation of death as annihilation, alexithymia, s...

Death Education and the Management of Fear of Death Via Photo-Voice: An Experience Among Undergraduate Students

This article presents the results of a qualitative study aiming to consider the relationship between ambiguous loss and anticipatory mourning amongst relatives of missing people in Italy Eight people participated in the research, narrating their experiences of losing a beloved person (one found alive, three found dead, and four still missing) Findings suggest the presence of a particular form of ambiguous loss, characterised by traits typical of both prolonged and traumatic grief These findings describe how families are faced with an emotional vortex related to a never-ending wait, and how the mourning is solved only when the missing person is found dead or alive The discovery of a corpse is traumatic but it allows mourners to fully recognise their grief When a person is found, it changes the relationship in a positive way When neither of these events happen, mourners have two different kinds of reactions: they experience either a prolonged grief or a drive to solve their suffering by helping other people (post-traumatic growth) In this study, it is highlighted how a community can be useful or detrimental in this process, and the importance of psychological and social support to prevent significant clinical outcomes is stressed

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/10/7/110/pdf

The Endless Grief in Waiting: A Qualitative Study of the Relationship between Ambiguous Loss and Anticipatory Mourning amongst the Relatives of Missing Persons in Italy.

In Italy, in the very first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic there was a dramatic rise in mortality. However, families were forbidden because of lockdown regulations to be with their loved ones at their deathbeds or to hold funerals. This qualitative study examined bereavement experiences among family members, how they processed their grief, and how they used social networks in particular by uploading photographs during the working-through of bereavement. The sample was composed of 40 individuals aged 23-63 (80% women) from different Italian cities severely impacted by the virus, including a subgroup from the province of Bergamo, which was the city with the highest mortality rate during that time. All interviews were conducted by phone, Skype, or Zoom. Then, the transcriptions underwent a thematic analysis using Atlas.ti. The main themes that emerged were: abandonment anger and guilt, dehumanized disappeared, derealization and constant rumination, and social support and the importance of sharing photos on Facebook. Importantly, the use of social networks proved to be a valuable source of support and photographs were a powerful tool in facilitating the process of mourning by encouraging narration and sharing. Grief had a complex profile: on the one hand, it was traumatic and characterized by all the risk factors causing mourners to experience prolonged grief, but on the other, some features were similar to ambiguous loss (that occurs without closure and clear understanding) because of the impossibility to be with their relatives in their final moments. The possible relationships between ambiguous loss, the use of internet, and the risk of prolonged grief are discussed.

/pdf/the-covid-19-disappeared-from-traumatic-to-ambiguous-loss-5e9ai0f2lt.pdf

The COVID-19 Disappeared: From Traumatic to Ambiguous Loss and the Role of the Internet for the Bereaved in Italy

Following a ritual perspective, the paper identifies a new form of ritual concerning the corpse, which could facilitate separation and allow the living to look at the deceased without disgust In o

Erika Iacona

Papers

“Before I die I want to …”: An experience of death education among university students of social service and psychology

Death Education and the Management of Fear of Death Via Photo-Voice: An Experience Among Undergraduate Students

The Endless Grief in Waiting: A Qualitative Study of the Relationship between Ambiguous Loss and Anticipatory Mourning amongst the Relatives of Missing Persons in Italy.

The COVID-19 Disappeared: From Traumatic to Ambiguous Loss and the Role of the Internet for the Bereaved in Italy

The Last Glance: How Aesthetic Observation of Corpses Facilitates Detachment in Grief Work: