Death, Society, and the Human Experience - 9th edition

1. As We Think About Death.

Not Thinking about Death: A Failed Experiment.
Your Self-Inventory of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Feelings.
Some Answers-And the Questions They Raise.
Humans Are Mortal: But What Does That Have to Do with Me?
Anxiety, Denial, and Acceptance: Three Core Concepts.
Theories and Studies of Death Anxiety.
Major Findings From Self-Reports of Death Anxiety
Theoretical Perspectives on Death Anxiety
Accepting and Denying Death.

2. What Is Death? What Does Death Mean?

Competing Ideas about the Nature and Meaning of Death.
Death Observed, Proclaimed, and Imagined
Biomedical Approaches to the Definition of Death.
Event Versus State
What Does Death Mean?
Interpretations of the Death State
Conditions That Resemble Death.
Death as a Person.
Conditions That Death Resembles.
Death as an Agent of Personal, Political, and Social Change.

3. The Death System.

A World without Death.
Basic Characteristics of the Death System.
Functions of the Death System
Tsunami and Hurricane Katarina: Challenges to the Death System
Hurricanes Katarina and Rita
How Our Death System Has Been Changing-And the "Deathniks" Who Are Making a Difference.
Causes of Death: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.
Basic Terms and Concepts.

4. Dying: Transition from life.

Transition From Life.
What Is Dying and When Does It Begin?
Trajectories of Dying: From Beginning to End.
Healthy People Who Are at Risk: Hemophilia.
Guarded Feelings, Subtle Communications.
Individuality and Universality in the Experience of Dying.
Theoretical Models of the Dying Process.

5. The Hospice Approach to Terminal Care.

Hospice: A Flowering from Ancient Roots.
Standards of Care for the Terminally Ill.
Establishment of Hospice Programs in the United States.
The Hospice in Action.
Relief of Pain and Suffering
Hospice Access, Decision-Making, and Challenges.
Dame Cicely Saunder's Reflection on Hospice

6. End-of-Life Issues and Decisions.

From Description to Decision-Making
Who Should Participate in End-of-Life Decisions?
The Living Will and Its Impact.
Right-to-Die Decisions That We Can Make.
A Right Not to Die? The Cryonics Alternative.
Organ Donation
Funeral-Related Decisions

7. Suicide.

What Do the Statistics Tell Us?
Four Problem Areas.
Some Cultural Meanings of Suicide.
A Powerful Sociological Theory of Suicide.
Some Individual Meanings of Suicide.
Facts, Myths, and Guidelines.
Suicide Prevention.

8. Violent Death; Murder, Terrorism, Genocide, Disaster, and Accident.

Murder.
Terrorism.
Immediate Responses to Loss and Trauma
Later responses
The Darfur Genocide
Accident and Disaster.

9. Euthanasia, Assisted Death, Abortion, and the Right to Die.

"I Swear by Apollo the Physician": What Happened to the Hippocratic Oath?
Key Terms and Concepts.
Our Changing Attitudes Toward a Right to Die.
The Right-to-Die Dilemma: Case Examples.
Terri Schiavo: Who Decides?
Dr. Kevorkian and the Assisted Suicide Movement.
Assisted Death in the U.S.
Abortion

10. Death in the World of Childhood.

Adult Assumptions about Children and Death.
Concepts of Death: Developing through Experience.
How Do Children Cope with Bereavement?
The Dying Child.
Sharing the Child's Death Concerns: A Few Guidelines.
The "Right" to Decide: Should the Child's Voice Be Heard?

11. Bereavement, Grief, And Mourning.

Some Responses to Loss
Defining Our Terms: Bereavement, Grief, and Mourning.
Theoretical Perspectives on Grief.
Types of Grief
Theories of Grief
How Do People Recover from Grief?
The Family That Has Lost a Child
Bereavement in Later Life.
Are Bereaved People at Higher Risk for Death?
How Well do we Support the Bereaved?
Meaningful Help for Bereaved People.
Professional Help: When is it Needed?
Widows in Third World Nations.

12. The Funeral Process.

What Do Funerals Mean to Us?
From Dead Body to Living Memory: A Process Approach.
Making Death "Legal."
What Does the Funeral Process Accomplish?
Memories of Our People: Cemeteries in the United States.
The Place of the Dead in Society: Yesterday and Today.
The Funeral Director's Perspective.
Improving the Funeral Process.
Integrity and Abuse in the Funeral and Memorial Process.

13. Do We Survive Death?

Concept of Survival in Historical Perspective.
Heavens and Hells
The Desert religions and Their One God
What Other People Believe
Can Survival Be Proved?
Near-Death Experiences: New Evidence for Survival?
The Dead as Evidence for Survival.
Should We Survive Death?
But What Kind of Survival?
Assisted and Symbolic Survival
The Suicide-Survival Connection.

14. How Can We Help? Caregiving and Death Education

The Promise of Death Education and Counseling.
"Compassionate Fatigue": Burnout and the Health Care Provider
Death Educators and Counselors: The "Border Patrol.".
Death Education and Counseling: The Current Scene.
Counseling and the Counselors.
How We All Can Help.

16. Good Life, Good Death. Trying to Make Sense of It All.

Trying to Make Sense of It All.
Horrendous Death.
"The Good Death" : Fantasy or Reality?
From Good Life to Good Death: A Personal Statement.
Appendix: Selected Learning Resources

Index