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Sep 30, 2024
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2024-2025 College Catalog
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PSY 220 - The Psychology of Death and Loss 3 Credits, 3 Contact Hours 3 lecture periods 0 lab periods Adjustment to death and loss. Includes thinking about death, meaning of death, death system, dying, hospice, and end-of-life issues. Also includes suicide, violent death, euthanasia, bereavement, funeral process, near death experiences, and death education and counseling.
Recommendation: PSY 101 and REA 091 (or assessment into REA 112 ). If any recommended course is taken, see a financial aid or Veteran’s Affairs advisor to determine funding eligibility as appropriate.
Course Learning Outcomes
- Distinguish between attitudes, beliefs, and feelings regarding death.
- Apply critical theory to concepts of death.
- Describe the functions of a death system.
- Integrate the concept of dying into view of life transitions.
- Distinguish between hospice and traditional medical care of dying people.
- Describe significant pathways to healthcare decision-making.
- Differentiate myths from facts about suicide.
- Discuss individual and societal dynamics involved in violent death.
- Define the role and responsible and responsibilities of the physician as a key person in assisted suicide and right-to-die decisions.
- Discuss guidelines for sharing the child’s death concerns in whatever situations they arise.
- Distinguish between those responses to the grieving person that are perceived as helpful and unhelpful.
- Define both the similarities and differences in the funeral and memorial processes as practiced by people of varying racial, ethnic and religious traditions.
- Compare and contrast findings supporting and not supporting near-death experiences.
- Identify key issues and challenges in the field of thanatology.
- Identify some of the ways in which our feelings about dying and death have been changing as the conditions of life have also changed.
Outline:
- Thinking About Death
- Self-inventory of attitudes, beliefs, and feelings
- Accepting and denying death
- Meaning of Death
- Biomedical approaches
- Death as an agent of personal, political, and social change
- Death System
- Basic characteristics
- Causes of death
- Dying and Life Transitions
- Trajectories of dying
- Experience of dying
- Hospice and Traditional Medical Care
- Standards of care
- Programs in action
- Health Care Decision-Making
- Living Will
- Right-to-die decisions
- Suicide
- Statistical profile
- Cultural meanings
- Individual and Societal Dynamics
- Facts, myths, and guidelines
- Suicide prevention
- Violent Death
- Murder
- Terrorism
- Accident and disaster
- Euthanasia
- Attitudes toward a right-to-die.
- Dilemmas
- Dr. Kevorkian and the assisted-suicide movement
- Death in Childhood
- Concepts of death
- Helping children cope with bereavement
- Dying children
- Funeral Process
- Current developments
- Memorials
- Becoming a knowledgeable consumer of funeral services
- Near-Death Experience
- Historical perspective
- Evidence favoring near-death experiences
- Problems with near-death experiences findings
- Death Education and Counseling
- Historical perspective
- Current scene
- Counseling and psychotherapy
- Perspectives
- The good death
- Making sense of it all
Effective Term: Spring 2016
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