Mortality 

About: Mortality is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Grief & Palliative care. It has an ISSN identifier of 1357-6275. Over the lifetime, 854 publications have been published receiving 13514 citations.

A new model of grief: Bereavement and biography

Abstract: The dominant model found in contemporary bereavement literature sees grief as a working through of emotion, the eventual goal being to move on and live without the deceased. This article challenges this model by analysing the own author's own experience of loss and by drawing together recent research papers which suggest an alternative, more sociological, model. Survivors typically want to talk about the deceased and to talk with others who knew him or her. Together they construct a story that places the dead within their lives, a story capable of enduring through time. The purpose of grief is therefore the construction of a durable biography that enables the living to integrate the memory of the dead into their ongoing lives; the process by which this is achieved is principally conversation with others who knew the deceased. The process hinges on talk more than feeling; and the purpose entails moving on with, as well as without, the deceased. This kind of grief process is particularly necessary in a late...

AIDS in the twenty-first century: Disease and globalization

Abstract: AIDS in the twenty-first century: Disease and globalization (2nd ed.). By TONY BARNETT & ALAN WHITESIDE, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2006, 449pp., £14.99, paperback (ISBN 1403997683). This boo...

Bracketing interviews: addressing methodological challenges in qualitative interviewing in bereavement and palliative care

Abstract: A major challenge for researchers using qualitative methods is to explore how their assumptions and experiences may be influencing the construction of knowledge. In a study of UK childhood bereavement services, “bracketing interviews” were used to explore the impact of the researcher's personal and professional experiences during data collection and analysis. Bracketing interviews provide an important research-focussed relationship that adapts the skills of clinical supervision in the context of research. While other forms of activity offer opportunities for reflection, the presence of a skilled “bracketer” contributed to the production of knowledge by increasing objectivity and amplifying the researcher's own reflexive capacity. Without entering the researcher's material therapeutically, bracketing interviews enabled the researcher to hold the tension of the dialectic process of investigating the nature of the participants' experience, at the same time as holding her own experience. It enabled t...

Whose dying? A sociological critique of the 'good death'

Abstract: This paper aims to describe and analyse the ideology of the 'good death'; an ideology central to the modern hospice movement and underpinning many of the challenges to the medical management of dying and death. The development of the concept of the 'good death' will be traced from the work of the French historian, Aries, through the influential writings of Kubler-Ross, to the contemporary contributions within the sociology of dying and death. The good death concept now holds a diversity of definitions and meanings that unify around the ideal of dying with dignity, peacefulness, preparedness, awareness, adjustment and acceptance. The paper has as a central concern the dominance of the 'good death' ideology, leading to the labelling of 'good' and 'bad' patients, and consequent attempts by caregivers to shape the lives of dying people. This paper suggests that the ideology of the good death legitimates a new form of social control within which socially approved dying and death are characterized by proscribed...

… And a time to die: How American hospitals shape the end of life

Abstract: … And a time to die: How American hospitals shape the end of life. By SHARON R. KAUFMAN, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005, 400pp, US$18.00, paperback (ISBN 0226426858). This book, drawing...