Hospice Care Providing Quality Healthcare Term Paper

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Children believed that death is more like sleep and the dead may or may not return. Children between five and nine years of age belonged to the second group. Maria observed that children belonging to the second group perceived death as an irreversible phenomenon but still thought of it as an avoidable one. Death for these children represented a certain shadowy or skeletal figure who could possibly be evaded with some luck and intelligence. According to the author only the last group of children representing the ages of ten and above fully understood death as an inevitable eventuality for everyone. Thus Maria Nagy classified children's perception of death as a measure of their age. [Lewis R. Aiken]

However, studies, which were conducted much later in the United States, showed different results. These studies showed that the interpretation of death by children is not limited by their age alone and their own experience of this inevitable natural phenomenon is important. Several studies showed that children belonging to the second group as classified by Maria did not have any personifications of death as her study claimed. In particular, the 1978 study by Myra Bluebond-Langner, professor of anthropology, University of Illinois, (and the winner of Charles Corr Award for her contribution and studies in the field of children and death) revealed that all views of death existed in every stage of child development. Therefore the perception of death was more due to the mental maturity and also fear of death is assimilated from parents in the same way as every other emotion.

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An incident where the child experiences the death of a parent or relative alters the Childs perception about death. Langener's study revealed that children's expression of fear of death was defined by their chronological age. While for very young children separation was the main factor, children in mid- childhood were more fearful of bodily mutilation and the thought of the end of their lives. Langner classified five different stages through which terminally ill children pass through revealing their high awareness of death and dying. [Lewis R. Aiken, Pg, 247]

In another recent study, Brent et.al (1996) found that even kids between 3 and 5 years of age had a comprehension of the universality of death. Another research by Kenyon (2001) revealed that by the age 10 most children begin to appreciate death as a biological causality. [Carol K. Sigelman, pg. 498] We notice that the follow up studies though generally agreed upon Maria Nagy's findings deviated from it in that, the perception of death was more related to mental maturity, which in turn is shaped by the events in the life of the child (witnessing the death of a family member, terminal illness, etc.) Children with terminal illness for example tend to have a perception of death, which is way beyond their age......

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