Illness and Loss: Children, Adolescents and Youth: Extended description and Course Objectives – Kay Fowler, Fall 2009

Extended Course Description for Illness and Loss: Children, Adolescents, and Youth:

While death and loss are universal, the death and loss of children in twenty-first century America strikes survivors and communities as unexpected, deeply tragic, and even “unreasonable.” While child mortality was a significant reality in earlier centuries and remains shockingly high in various parts of the world, for most groups (not all!) in the United States, child mortality has dropped significantly over the past hundred years. Yet cancer and other life-altering illnesses still do strike the young and, despite impressive advances in treatments and cures -- do sometimes prove fatal. Young people are also tragically vulnerable to a range of life-threatening environmental and social threats. Household and vehicle accidents claim multiple young lives as do mass disasters such as hurricanes, or earthquakes. Trauma, grief, and even “preventable” deaths also result from domestic and other violence, depression/suicide, AIDS/HIV, date battering, rape and sexual abuse, substance use and risky behavior, hate crimes and terrorism, and military service in a time of war.

Surviving friends, families, and communities need particular support and understanding. Special training and support is needed for caregivers in the health and mental health fields, for teachers, for coaches, for families and communities as they seek to care for ill and dying children. Interventions and support of bereaved and traumatized children need to be designed and provided with a sensitivity to developmental concepts of death, and of the ways that children grieve and continue to “re-grieve” through changing developmental stages. New understandings of continuing bonds with the deceased –- and of the ways that children, adolescents and youth make meaning, find hope and courage, and draw on resilience -- have profoundly changed the way we consider the concerns of children and their families in the context of illness and loss. We will explore and examine particularly how the experience, perception, and impact of these experiences is complexified by developmental levels, issues of race, class, gender, cultural values, spiritual beliefs etc.

Students will explore these topics through readings in key texts, articles and AV materials from the field of thanatology. The course will be web-enhanced. Experiential activities in class, field trips, guest speakers, and group work will assist students as they grapple with difficult concepts that can be emotionally as well as academically demanding. Students will process their learning through a regularly maintained reflection journal based on discussion questions generated by students and by the professor. The journal will inform class discussion, serve as a resource for the exam, and will culminate in a reflective essay. As various texts and a/v materials "talk to" and "talk back to" other texts, so students are encouraged to engage thoughtfully, critically, and imaginatively with the texts and materials encountered throughout the semester. The class is especially encouraged to bring course materials to bear on personal experiences and vice-versa.

Students will further deepen their understanding and enhance their critical analysis and research skills through scholarly research and explorations into thanatological resouces using print resources, electronic databases, web-based resources, and exposure to professional associations like the Association for Death Education and Counseling. Students will present the results of their research and analysis through the development of a Grant Proposal and Resource Project which will be presented orally in the Resource Project Demonstration and in the form of a Grant Proposal accompanying the Resource Project.

The course is open to all interested students and is particularly recommended for students in health fields, psychology, social work, teacher education and other helping professions. It is recommended – but not required -- that students have previously taken SOSC314 Death and Dying, Life and Living.

Special note: Charles Corr writes in his text Death and Dying, Life and Living 4^th ed. 2003: “Of course education is different from counseling and a classroom is not really an appropriate place in which to expect to receive individual therapy. Certainly educators in the field must be alert to individuals who are unable to cope with difficult personal experiences by themselves. For such people, education alone may not be sufficient to address their needs. If you are in this situation, it may be appropriate to seek a referral for personal counseling or therapy. Also if you have recently experienced a major loss in your life and do not find comfort in a dispassionate, educational approach to death-related topics, you might choose to postpone enrolling in a course on death and dying until some later time. The point here is that the classroom environment may not meet all needs at all times.”

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course students will:
1. Understand and recognize the impact on individuals and society of the universality of impermanence, death, and loss with special recognition of the sense of unexpectedness and “unreasonableness” of death at a young age.

2. Be able to explain concepts of death, death attitudes, and death anxiety levels as they affect children at different developmental stages and apply this understanding to strategies and approaches that personal and professional caregivers can use in supporting children who are in crisis and grief.

3. Recognize the significant variability in the experience of death, dying, grief, and healing depending on culture, economics, race, religion, gender, nation, family structure, and personal experience.

4. Develop basic cultural competence in addressing thanatological issues within students’ professional areas.

5. Develop compassion for individuals, community, and the larger world and a commitment to activism, equity and social justice.

6. Gain a solid familiarity with the field of thanatology, thanatology concepts and theories (e.g. “continuing bonds” and “re-grieving”), and with research techniques and appropriate resources for thanatology especially as applied to children, adolescents, and youth.

7. Apply enhanced critical thinking skills, research skills, and writing skills to thanatological concepts.

8. Develop enhanced appreciation, understanding, and empathy for children and families experiencing illness, grief, and caregiving challenges through hands-on experiential activities, field trips and problem-solving tasks.

9. Be aware of and appreciate the experiences and challenges of the family and caregivers of ill and grieving children and of strategies that can assist them.

10. Gain familiarity with the special legal, medical, health and pastoral care approaches involved in the dying and death of children.

11. Identify and develop coping strategies and resilience and be aware of ways to foster such coping strategies for clients, patients, friends, and kin.

12. Appreciate the multiple ways that children, adolescents, and youth seek to "make meaning" of loss, pain, illness, etc. (spirituality, social activism, learning, creativity, relationship-strengthening).