Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a crash course in thanatology, the study of death from every angle. America is a death-denying culture, and talking about death is the number-one taboo. Fear of death affects people's lives in many ways. Learn how the hospice movement provides care and comfort for dying people. Read about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who developed the five stages of grief and said that she became religious after hearing about her dying patients' near-death experiences. Determine when to seek a grief counselor after the death of a loved one. Read case studies of people with extreme grief reactions who improved after therapy. (Students who want to become psychologists specializing in grief counseling can learn how in chapter 1.) Discover how grief can affect someone's health, how "broken heart syndrome" can lead to death, and why a "bad death" from suicide, homicide, and violent accidents hurts loved ones more. Find out the latest on physician-assisted death and which states legally allow it. Learn the differences among a coma, a vegetative state, and brain death, as well as the bodily and psychological changes as death nears. This book describes healthy ways to accept death and answers the question "What does 'dying well' mean?"
