Health professionals and educators should develop their abilities to educate about death and to comfort the bereaved. Due to lower death rates, the lack of philosophical religious views, and distorted perceptions of death contributed by television, death has become a mystery instead of a segment of the common experience. Particularly when a child…

Based on the premise that health care providers and institutions have a professional obligation to help bereaved families, this booklet focuses on the role of health care professionals in lessening distress, helping prevent pathological outcomes, and assisting the bereaved toward a satisfactory outcome. The information provided in this guide is…

This booklet provides mental health professionals with an analytic framework for understanding psychosocial reactions to bereavement of adults and children and for selecting appropriate intervention strategies. It also identifies those people most likely to need the intervention of a mental health professional to help prevent or mitigate…

This booklet was designed to help school personnel make good use of their opportunities for helping bereaved children directly as well as helping others in the classroom who may have concerns about death upon hearing of another child's loss. It provides necessary information for teachers on how children view death and the nature of bereavement…

Included in this booklet is an account of children's concepts of death at various ages. Specifically, the discussion examines the "average" or "normal" reaction of children from birth through 2 years; 3 through 5 years; 5 through 8 years; 9 through 10 years; and at 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 years. Children's reactions to the death of a pet and…