(Press-News.org) WACO, Texas (Sept. 25, 2012) — Moving through the traditional stages of grief can be as unpredictable as playing a pinball machine, with triggers of sorrow acting like pinball rudders to send a mourner into a rebound rather than an exit, according to a case study by a Baylor University researcher and a San Antonio psychologist.
For some, grieving is complete after the loss is accepted. But for others, such events as the anniversary of a death or a scene that jogs the memory can send them slamming into grief again, according to a case study by Margaret Baier, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the family and consumer sciences department at Baylor and a marriage and family therapist, and Ruth Buechsel, a psychologist at Brooke Army Medical Center. Their study appears in the September Mental Health Practice nursing journal.
Baier, who teaches in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences, developed the model of the pinball machine, recognizing its potential to be used as a metaphor to help those in mourning make sense of their chaotic experience and be prepared when grief is triggered or prolonged by other events.
The five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — were set out in a model by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, inspired by her work with terminal patients and their survivors. She noted that the process might not be sequential, but many expect it to end with acceptance.
In the case of Heather (a pseudonym), 24, the woman in the researchers' case study, she learned of her father's illness when she was several thousand miles from her family attending graduate school, Baier said.
With a close family, strong faith and no history of psychological problems before she went through marital and divorce therapy, she could not grasp the news that this would be her last Christmas with her father, who was relatively young with a healthy lifestyle and no family history of cancer. Being far away from her family made it easier for Heather to deny the impending death.
She often "bargained" in the form of prayer, offering various areas of her life in exchange for her father's health. When her bargaining was not successful, she stopped attending church and praying, questioned her religious beliefs and grew angry at those who suggested her lack of faith was why her father was not being healed.
While she did not meet the criteria for clinical depression, she was sad and tearful daily, feeling hopeless and guilty. She lost her appetite, felt fatigued, missed work and lost interest in her studies, believing she would never be happy again. She finally accepted the diagnosis, but then struggled as she saw her father handle his business affairs, prepare for his death, suffer through treatments and eventually die.
In Heather's case, using the pinball analogy gave her "a sense of relief that she was not crazy" and would be able to feel joy again, Baier said. "One of the most freeing aspects of this model is the notion that grief is never complete."
Through the years, Heather reported that a scent, a song on the radio or a piece of literature sometimes reminded her of the pain she once felt. But "eventually, she returned to acceptance, knowing that grief was resting but not gone."
The model also has potential for helping those coping with separation or divorce, loss of employment or financial loss, as well as to help those people close to them understand and offer support, Baier said.
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Are the longevity and vitality of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) due to its holistic approach? Indeed, Chinese medicine is not simply about treating illness, but rather about taking care of the whole person—body, mind, and spirit. According to an analysis¹ of TCM's origins and development by Lin Shi from Beijing Normal University and Chenguang Zhang from Southwest Minzu University in China, traditional Chinese medicine is profoundly influenced by Chinese philosophy and religion. To date, modern science has been unable to explain the mechanisms behind TCM's effects. ...
Los Angeles (September 25, 2012)- With ties to diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol, childhood obesity in wealthy countries is certainly of growing concern to researchers. A new study explores the ties between childhood weight problems, socioeconomic status, and nationality and finds that race, ethnicity, and immigrant status are risk factors for weight problems among children in the US and England. This new study was published in the September issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (a SAGE journal) titled "Migrant Youths and ...
How can laptop users be kinder to the environment by using less power?
University of Cincinnati computer science doctoral student Dippy Aggarwal will be among the leaders in their fields who are sharing emerging research and career interests at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, Oct. 3-6, in Baltimore. She'll present early results of her research in a poster presentation, "Leveraging Power Analytics and Linked Data for Enterprise Computing," on Wednesday, Oct. 3.
Aggarwal's presentation evolved from a summer 2011 internship at the Digital ...
WASHINGTON—Research comparing brain development in humans and our closest nonhuman primate relatives, chimpanzees, reveals how quickly myelin in the cerebral cortex grows, shedding light on the evolution of human cognitive development and the vulnerability of humans to psychiatric disorders, a GW professor finds. Myelin is the fatty insulation surrounding axon connections of the brain.
Recent research by Chet Sherwood, associate professor of anthropology in Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, along with Daniel Miller, a former GW graduate student, and other colleagues, ...
CHICAGO—In today's fast-paced society, consumers often reach for nutrition bars when looking for a healthy on-the-go snack. A new study in the September issue of the Journal of Food Science published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) found that partially replacing canola oil with fish oil in nutrition bars can provide the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids without affecting the taste.
Producers have been hesitant to incorporate fish oil into foods because it tends to give off a fishy taste or smell, therefore requiring additional processing steps to eliminate ...
CHICAGO—A new study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), shows that grape skin and seeds generated from winemaking—known as wine pomace—are a good source of antioxidant dietary fiber and can be used to fortify various food products such as yogurts and salad dressings with enhanced nutritional value and extended shelf-life.
The researchers from Oregon State University analyzed pomace from Pinot Noir and Merlot wines to determine the most economically feasible ways to convert the rich source of antioxidants in pomace into ...
Although they're a common nuisance in the home, fruit flies have made great contributions to research in genetics and developmental biology. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is again turning to this everyday pest to answer crucial questions about how neurons function at a cellular level — which may uncover the secrets of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
Approximately 75 percent of the genes that are related to diseases in humans are also to be found in the fly, says Ya'ara Saad, a PhD candidate in the lab of Prof. Amir Ayali at TAU's Department ...
Researchers in Georgia Tech's Center for Behavior Imaging have developed two new technological tools that automatically measure relevant behaviors of children, and promise to have significant impact on the understanding of behavioral disorders such as autism.
One of the tools—a system that uses special gaze-tracking glasses and facial-analysis software to identify when a child makes eye contact with the glasses-wearer—was created by combining two existing technologies to develop a novel capability of automatic detection of eye contact. The other is a wearable system that ...
Washington, DC—U.S. health care spending grew at a faster pace than expected in 2011,
according to a new report from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI). The Health Care Cost and
Utilization Report: 2011 provides the first broad look at 2011 health care spending among those
with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). HCCI found that average dollars spent on health care
services for that population climbed 4.6 percent in 2011, reaching $4,547 per person. This was
well above the 3.8 percent growth rate observed in 2010 and beyond expected growth for
2011.
Consumers ...
ITHACA, N.Y. — For more than 50 years, language scientists have assumed that sentence structure is fundamentally hierarchical, made up of small parts in turn made of smaller parts, like Russian nesting dolls. But a new Cornell University study suggests language use is simpler than they had thought.
Co-author Morten Christiansen, Cornell professor of psychology and co-director of the Cornell Cognitive Science Program, and his colleagues say that language is actually based on simpler sequential structures, like clusters of beads on a string.
"What we're suggesting is ...
