Grief: Putting the Past before Us

Grief research in philosophy agrees that one who grieves grieves over the irreversible loss of someone whom the griever loved deeply, and that someone thus factored centrally into the griever’s sense of purpose and meaning in the world. The analytic literature in general tends to focus its treatments on the paradigm case of grief as the death of a loved one. I want to restrict my account to the paradigm case because the paradigm case most persuades the mind that grief is a past-directed emotion. The phenomenological move I propose will enable us to respect the paradigm case of grief and a broader but still legitimate set of grief-generating states of affairs, liberate grief from the view that grief is past directed or about the past, and thus account for grief in a way that separates it from its closest emotion-neighbor, sorrow, without having to rely on the affective quality of those two emotions.If the passing of the beloved causes the grief but is not what the grief is about, then we can get at the nature of grief by saying its temporal orientation is in the past, but its temporal meaning is the present and future—the new significance of a world with the pervasive absence that is the world without the beloved. The no-longer of grief is a no-longer oriented by a past that is referred a present and future. Looking at the griever’s relation to time can tell us much about the pain and the object of grief, then. As the griever puts the past before himself with a certainty about this world “henceforth,” a look at the griever’s lived sense of the fi nality of the irreversibly lost liberates grief from the tendency in the literature to be reduced to a past-directed emotion, accounts for grief ’s intensity, its affective force or poignancy, and thus enables us to separate grief from sorrow according to its intentionalobject in light of the temporal meaning of these emotions

Non-discrimination under the European Convention on Human Rights: a critique of the UK Government's refusal to sign and ratify Protocol 12

The European Convention on Human Rights does not contain a general prohibition of discrimination. Article 14 is accessory to the Convention’s other substantive guarantees and has no independent existence, with the result that certain forms of discrimination cannot be brought within its ambit. In order to cure this defect, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has adopted Protocol 12 which provides for a general prohibition of discrimination. However, the UK Government has declared that it has no immediate plans to sign and ratify Protocol 12. After outlining the scope of Article 14 with reference to recent Strasbourg and domestic case-law and explaining the main provisions of the new Protocol, this article offers a critique of the Government’s positio

Effectiveness of a grief intervention for caregivers of people with dementia

In this article, we report on the structure and effectiveness of a grief management coaching intervention with caregivers of individuals with dementia. The intervention was informed by Marwit and Meuser’s Caregiver Grief Model and considered levels of grief, sense of empowerment, coping, and resilience using five methods of delivery. Results indicate that the intervention had significant positive effects on caregivers’ levels of grief and increased their levels of empowerment, coping, and resilience. The intervention was found to be effective across caregivers’ characteristics as well as across five delivery modalities. Through description of this intervention, as well as outcome, this research contributes to the body of knowledge about caregivers’ disenfranchised grief and ways to effectively address it

Guided Grief Imagery: A Resource for Grief Ministry and Death Education

Reviewed Book: Droege, Thomas A. Guided Grief Imagery: A Resource for Grief Ministry and Death Education. New York: Paulist Press, 1987

Complicated Grief in Palestinian Children and Adolescents

This study aims to identify the traumatic losses and resultant complicated grief of adolescents in occupied Palestine. A secondary analysis was conducted on a data set from 133, 11-14 year olds who had completed the Exposure to War Stressors Questionnaire, the Children’s Revised Impact of Events Scale and the Traumatic Grief Inventory for Children (TGIC). For the first time, a statistically significant cut-off was applied to the TGIC. As a consequence, the co-morbidity of complicated grief was explored with posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. Findings indicate adolescents in Nablus experienced multiple traumatic losses resulting in 20% experiencing complicated grief. Because of the strict statistical cut-off, indications are this may be an underestimate. Complicated grief presented as a distinct trauma response. Recommendations are made for future research and practice

Predeath Grief, Resourcefulness, and Perceived Stress Among Caregivers of Partners With Young-Onset Dementia

More than 200,000 Americans are currently diagnosed with young-onset dementia (YOD). YOD is dementia diagnosed prior to the age of 65. Most persons of YOD are cared for by their partners. Using the theoretical framework of Resilience Theory, this cross-sectional, correlational study examined the moderating effects of personal and social resourcefulness on the relationship between predeath grief and perceived stress among 104 YOD caregiving partners (life partners/spouses) using an online survey platform. Results indicated a large positive correlation between predeath grief and caregiver perceived stress (r = .65; p \u3c .001). Together predeath grief, personal resourcefulness and social resourcefulness explained 51.5% of the variance in perceived stress. Personal resourcefulness did not moderate the relationship. Social resourcefulness did positively moderate this relationship between predeath grief and perceived stress. These findings allow for a better understanding of the caregiving experience for a partner with YOD and creates opportunities for future research studies

Design of microfluidic networks

Microfluidics is a relatively new and fast growing research area in fluid mechanics. The devices in question are thin wafers containing etched or printed interconnecting channels through which fluids are pumped, which can mix and/or react at various nodes to produce an output product. Microfluidic devices have applications in many manufacturing and chemical detection processes. For example, they can be used to manufacture monodisperse droplets with very well defined properties for pharmaceutical applications; or form the basis for miniaturised ‘lab-on-a-chip’ sensor arrays for detecting biological substances or toxins