LOSS IN FAMILY

1.0       INTRODUCTION

Loss someone that significant in life is hurtful and fearful to people. It can happen anytime anywhere and sometimes it is unexpected. There are two types of loss that can happen which are separation and death. We more focus to the issues of death of people. The causes of dead are accident, ill, suicide and miscarriage and will affect the significant people surround them especially family like spouse, children, parents and siblings. This is about how family accept the loss and faced the process the grief. Grief is an emotional response experienced in early phase of bereavement (Papalia & Feldman, 2012). Bereavement is a process of adjustment to the due to death of someone to whom one feels close (Papalia & Feldman, 2012). When this is happen, family members will deal with the bereavement to cope with the incident. It is can take a long journey due to the acceptance of death because some people can recover fast and other cannot. There are some issues will appear due to the death like emotional disturb, financial, roles in family, child care and others issue that effect to the family members. When this process happened, family members will seek the support from relatives and also from the professional. According to Willis (2005), often extremely difficult for children and family to get the support that they need in a short and long term if the death is unexpected. This is because they are unprepared to face that death and takes time to accept it. They need a safe environment to share their feeling and thought during the grief process. In a one stage, they need a professional to help them control their emotion and cope with the situation.  

2.0       STAGE OF GRIEF

According to Kubler-Ross (1970), there are 5 stages of loss that include during the period of bereavement but not everyone will face all the stage because it is depends on the person.

1.      Denial: This is defence mechanism for an individual to survive of a loss. They refuse to accept the reality and try to hide their feeling.

2.      Anger: When an individual realize that denial are not longer, anger will take place. This may occur when the individual face the reality of loss.

3.      Bargaining: Individual try to create hope to postpone the loss. They may bargain with the pain that they will do anything to not feel the pain.

4.      Depression: Stage of individual in a state of low mood and understand the certainly of loss. They will express through overwhelming feeling of frustration, hopeless and lack of control the emotion.

5.      Acceptance: This stage when individual realized that they need to accept the loss. They understand that the loss not their fault and try to cope of that situation.    

3.0       IMPLICATION TO FAMILY

The death of someone closes especially in our family it was very painful and terrible for someone to feel it. When it happens, they may express the difference feeling between each other. This is because of the different types of loss and wide variation in the ways in which individuals experience and respond to loss. There may be different reactions to death based on who died in your family. So, death can give several impacts like financial, roles in family, child care and others issue that effect to the family members.

When a person dies in our family, it will effect of your financial management also. The impact for individuals depends on age, gender, social class, marital status, health and employment status and culturally held beliefs and practices (Anne Corden, Michael Hirst & Katharine Nice, 2008). The financial problems occur when people are important in the family was gone. They cannot manage their finances well and felt they did not have enough money to support their family. People whose partners had financial responsibilities or commitments beyond their immediate household may face particular problems because they cover household expenses. It is hard to them to take this responsibility. They continuing to take this responsibility although their income is reduced but it is necessary to maintain family ties and the future of his loved ones.

In addition, when people loss someone who their loved, they will affect their emotional and thought. They may feel sadness and loneliness. They will feel deep sadness because they were not with the people they close. Loss in context of death also has given negative effects if they cannot handle their emotions well. According to Stroebe, Stroebe, & Abakoumkin (2005) in Rogers C.H et al (2008) research found that bereaved persons, especially those with extreme emotional loneliness and severe depressive symptoms, are at risk for suicidal ideation. This means that it will cause a person to act out of control. They maybe think that their life is not giving meaning because the person was gone and they must go through this life alone and it difficult to them to accept. A person who has had early stress, trauma and poor attachment may find grieving more difficult than someone who had secure early attachment (Mallon, 2008).

For the death of their parents, it will have a big impact because they lost the person who always supported them and loss of the role model in family. They need to be independent and know their role in the family but not the children below 12 years old. They do not understand of death. It was believed that children did not or could not grieve because they had an immature concept of death. Actually, the children do perceive the death differently but in their own way.  So, this maybe can affect their life if adult or people around them not take an action to help them reduce their feelings in order to avoid something worse happen.

4.0       INTERVENTION BY USING GENOGRAM

           

Genogram can be used as an assessment for family members to understand the unique grief response of individual within the family system (Stokes, 2005). According to Stoke (2005) there is several function of genogram in bereavement assessment:

1.      Gain the information in the family members that also encourage the communication and trust significantly to gain the information about family names and other details.

2.      Identify previous losses. Based on the information about the family members, they can know about the previous losses like death, chronic illness, disability, divorce and unemployment and also to gauge their severity based on the perception of family members.

3.      Identify how family has coped with previous losses. Family members can explore which coping strategies are positive and helpful to grief phase.

4.      Determine the impact of the death on the current family system. There are any key transitions for the family like moving school, conflict relationship and marital separation are affected from the death and prepare for the any transition in the future.   

By using the genogram, it can help family members share about their perception, thought, feeling and acceptance of death among them and also working together to cope the grief phase. Counsellor can link the issue among the family members that have the same view or not.

5.0       CONCLUSION

Everyone have difference experience of significant loss in their life. The process to accept the reality of losses also different, it is depends on the perception of dead and how they cope with the losses.  Sometimes we do not know how to respond on the news of death. Surely it is shock, cry and hard to believe. Death of spouse, parents and children will affect to the family members on psychological, behaviour, financial and role in family and also education of children. During the bereavement, each of the family will struggle for stabilize after the death and work towards a stable equilibrium as to managing the crisis (Stokes, 2005). According to Worden (1996), there are four ‘tasks’ must be accomplish by the bereaved person to survive. First is accept the reality of the loss that individual usually still cannot face the losses. Second is experience the pain and emotional aspect of the loss that individual must allow the hurt, angry, guilty and others emotion in fact to release the burden. Third is a adjust to an environment in which the deceased is missing because living has been drastically change and have to make a new life style to overcome the pain. Last is relocate the dead person and invest in new life that individual must find the new meaning of life but still keep the dead person in memories. This task is one of the ways the individual overcome their crisis and continue their life. Of course is hard to forget the dead person, the pain and the memories but find the way to cope with the death. Death is for sure but future is something that we need to plan it. Find activities that can make life more meaningful like travel, join a volunteer, shopping and also share the feeling with someone who can trust to release the burden itself.          

REFERENCES

Corden,A., Hirst, M. & Nice K. (2008). Financial Implications of Death of a Partner. Social Policy Research Unit, University of York.

Feldman, R.D. & Papalia, D. E. (2012). Experience Human Development. United State: McGraw-Hill.

Kubler-Roses, E. (1969). On Death and Dying. 1st Edn. Macmillan. New York. Pp: 1020. citen from Lim, W. M. (2013). Revisiting Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief: Some comment on the Iphone 5. Journal of Social Science. (1), 11-13.

Mallon (2008). Attachment and Loss, Death and Dying. Theoretical Foundations for Bereavement Counselling.

Rogers, C., H., Floyd, F., J.,Seltzer, M., M., Greenberg, J. & Hong J. (2008). Long-Term Effects of the Death of a Child on Parents’ Adjustment in Midlife. Journal of Family Psychology, American Psychological Association 2008, Vol. 22, No. 2, 203–211.

Stoke, J. (2005). Family asessment. In M. Barbara, & K. Frances, Brief intervention with bereaved children (pp. 1-12). United State: Oxford University.

Willis, S. (2005). Work with bereaved children. In M. Barbara, & K. Frances, Brief intervention with bereaved children (pp. 1-12). United State: Oxford University.

Worden, J. W. (1991). Grief counselling and grief therapy. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. cited from M. Barbara, & K. Frances, Brief intervention with bereaved children (pp. 1-12). United State: Oxford University.

NORHAYANI BINTI HASSAN   NOR SYAHIRA HASNAN   SITI NOOR FATIN IDRUS