ABSTRACT
Thus far we have confined our attention to bereavement by death, we now move on to consider to what extent grief at the death of a loved person resembles reactions to other types of loss. Can the lessons we have learned in our studies of widowhood be of help, for instance, to the sick or the physically disabled? Conversely, can studies of other types of loss add to our understanding of reactions to bereavement? These are the themes of a multi-contributor book Coping with Loss: Helping Patients and their Families (Parkes and Markus, 1998), which looks at the many losses and changes that are met by members of the health-care professions. Other types of loss that have been studied using the same frame of reference include divorce (Kitson, 1982), unemployment (Fagin and Little, 1984), forced migration (Munoz, 1980), death of a domestic pet (Keddie, 1977; Morley and Fook, 2005; Rynearson, 1978), the recognition of serious and persistent mental illness in one’s family (Solomon and Draine, 1996), similar recognition (by DNA testing) of hereditary risk of a life-threatening illness, Huntington’s disease, (Sobel and Cowan, 2000), childlessness (Houghton and Houghton, 1977), relinquishing a baby to adoption (Askren and Bloom, 1999), and the losses involved in, of all things, recovery from cancer (Maher, 1982).
