Dying, bereavement

Attachment: Back to Basics

This paper presents the essential features of the survival strategy Attachment: its biological, psychological and social features, adaptive and maladaptive manifestations, and treatment for it s dysfunctions.

Attachment and its Ripples, 3d National Conference on Mental Health Aspects of Persons Affected by Family Separation 2006

This paper looks thoroughly at many aspects of Attachment from animal evolution to the depths of the human soul. It examines biological, psychological and social aspects of Attachment, and its pains and fulfilments.

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Publication Author: Paul Valent Categories: Attachment, Protected & Provided, Biopsychosocial, Dying, bereavement, Survival Strategies

Loss and trauma. Seminar to Victorian Advanced Training Program in the Psychotherapies Alfred Hospital Melbourne

Adaptive and maladaptive biopsychosocial responses to loss and bereavement are described. Traumatic loss leads to maladaptive griefs and depression. Other survival strategies from traumatic situationsleave their marks as well.

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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: August 2002 Categories: Adaptation, Accept & Grieve, Dying, bereavement, Survival Strategies

Loss and its consequences. Talk to Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

Headings are provided for the survival strategy Adaptation, starting with appraisals of loss, biological psychological and social adaptive and maladaptive stress responses including grief and depression, and ending with traumas and consequent illnesses.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 1997 Categories: Dying, bereavement

Loss, grief, traumatic loss and depression. Talk to Victorian Branch Royal Australasian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists

Characteristics of and connections between loss, grief, traumatic loss and depression are explored through clinical cases and personal history. Suppressed grief and traumatic loss may lead to depression. The various characteristics of clinical depression may be explained the activity of still extant survival strategies.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: June 2003 Categories: Dying, bereavement

Illness, Loss, Depression in Older People and Their Management. Talk Alfred Hospital

Principles of management of depressed hospital patients are: recognition and exploration of their state; non-specific treatment eg kindness; symptomatic treatment eg drugs for sleeplessness ; and specific treatment eg facilitating grief.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: August 2011 Categories: Dying, bereavement

Death and the family. Patient Management 4:11-25

Death in the family is the closest experience to one’s own death. Disruption of a close family bond leads to much heightened morbidity and mortality. Disruption of the Attachment bond, and the biopsychology of loss, grief, and mourning are examined. Each has its pains,stress responses, defences, and symptoms and illnesses.Each requires understanding in the healing process.

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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 1980 Categories: Attachment, Protected & Provided, Dying, bereavement, Survival Strategies

Transgenerational transmission of grief using the Holocaust as an example. National Association for Loss And Grief Conference

Some Holocaust losses were too much to grieve. It might be up to the next generation to do so. But this may be especially difficult, as the original traumas may need to be retrieved from unconscious inheritance of traumatic events, a conspiracy of silence, and unmentioned parental traumas. A clinical case is presented where these obstacles are overcome.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: October 1999 Categories: Dying, bereavement, Second Generation; Transgenerational Transmission

Issues with dying patients. Med J Aust 1:433-437

Doctors may deny that their patients are dying and attempt omnipotent means to keep them alive. Fear of death in both patients and doctors resonates with earlier fears of helplessness and abandonment. Once these are clarified patients may approach the ends of their lives with a sense of meaning and purpose, like a ripe fruit about to fall. Dying children can also achieve meaningful deaths if allowed to, and if they are supported.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 1978 Categories: Biopsychosocial, Dying, bereavement

Review of Issues with dying patients. Comment reagir vis-avis les mourants. Medecine Moderne. 34:1000-1001. Modern Medicine August

This is a review (in French) of the article Issues with dying patients.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 1979 Categories: Dying, bereavement

Management of the dying patient. Patient Management 3:7-9

Patients at the nadir of helplessness and doctors at the zenith of their powers may be out of step when it comes to dying patients. The taboo around death may be avoided by designating gravely ill patients and honestly reviewing their management.

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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 1979 Categories: Dying, bereavement

Psychotherapy in the dying and those with incipient bereavement. Aust J Psychotherapy. 3:64-75

A clinical case illustrates that psychotherapy with the dying and their families can be therapeutic for all involved. It may allow love and loss to be acknowledged in an existentially meaningful way. Therapy may forestall unresolved grief reactions later. Therapists must be aware of the toll such therapies exact on them.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 1984 Categories: Dying, bereavement, Trauma, Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy

Healing the mind is about more than just taking medicine. The Age Opinion

Recent research has claimed that antidepressants are no more efficient than placebos in most cases of depression. Patents and healers negotiate a compound of medication, placebo effects and grief for losses, according to available knowledge, hope and commitment.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 3rd March 2008 Categories: Dying, bereavement