Non-Anthropocentric Views to Pandemics to Come: Kinship and Topophilia

The covid-19 pandemic is a manifestation of the current ecological crisis, whose ultimate origin can be traced to human exceptionalism-based ontology. This text echoes the environmental humanities perspective to address two pertinent concepts, kinship and topophilia, to re-signify the interdependence of humanity with the web of life and the abiotic elements that sustain it. Likewise, mourning is proposed as an element that can bring us closer to this vital framework by reestablishing kinships and a rooted sense of belonging to a place. It is concluded that the most promising approach for preventing future pandemics requires the extension of kinship to the non-human. © 2023 Oles Honchar Dnipro National University. All rights reserved.

Black death and mourning as pandemic

Black bodies have been the site of devastation for centuries. We who inhabit and love these bodies live in a state of perpetual mourning. We mourn the disproportionate dying in our families, communities and the dying in the black diaspora. We are yet to come to terms with the death that accompanied the AIDS pandemic. Tuberculosis breeds in the conditions within which most of us live. We die from hours spent in the belly of the earth where we dig for minerals to feed the unquenchable thirst of capital. Malaria targets our neighbors with deathly accuracy. Ebola stalks west Africa where it has established itself as a rapacious black disease. It kills us. In the black diaspora, African Americans are walking targets for American police who kill and imprison them at rates that have created a prison industrial complex. Africans die in the Mediterranean ocean and join the spirits of ancestors drowned centuries ago. With South Africa as the point of departure, this paper stages a transcontinental examination of black death. It is animated by the following questions. What are the dimensions of black death, what is its scale and how is it mourned? What does the COVID-19 pandemic mean for we who are so intimately familiar with death? (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Caring for Grieving Congregations in South Africa After the Death of Their Pastors from COVID-19

The death of pastors to coronavirus (COVID-19), in Newer Pentecostal Churches (NPCs), presents spiritual challenges to these congregations who find it difficult to accept that their miracle-working pastors can die from such a pandemic, often seen in demonic terms. The chapter discusses multiple dimensional losses experienced by a congregation when their leader dies of a pandemic such as COVID-19. This chapter further examines the pastoral framework of assisting NPCs believers to respond meaningfully to the loss of their spiritual leaders. It proposes the elements that should characterise the pastoral framework that can facilitate healing for congregations who are grieving a pandemic caused death of their pastors. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Mourning Diaries: a dialogue between psychoanalysis and literature amidst a pandemic

Faced with the Brazilian government's negationist attitude which led to the exponential increase of deaths by COVID-19, the work of mourning is approached, in this work, as an element in the context of collective catastrophes that favors a political stance and a subjective elaboration of traumatic situations. We will then underline how mourning appears in literature as a strategy of subjectivation of what has been lost, especially through the writing of diaries. Based on the theoretical elements of Freud on mourning and Ferenczi on the appropriation of the traumatic, three diaries by authors who describe the work of mourning (Rolland Barthes, Boris Fausto and Neal Peart) are analyzed. It can be seen in these texts how mourning promotes a rearrangement of memories, entangling the individual and the collective, the exterior and the interior, calling for testimony. It also favors instinctual and narcissistic stabilization, enabling new approaches and the construction of a future life project. In the end, as a counterpoint to the federal government's disrespect for the grief of those who lost relatives and friends during the pandemic, the duty to recognize grief, to value it and to offer support for its realization is highlighted as a political strategy to promote the mental health. © 2022 Universidade Federal do Parana - Departamento de Psicologia. All rights reserved.

Commemoration and Emotional Sustenance: A Text Analysis of Students' Motivations Behind Online Mourning of Dr Li Wenliang.

As one of the first doctors issued a protective warning to the public, Dr. Li Wenliang was known as "whistleblower" of COVID-19 pandemic. After his death of COVID-19, students entered to his Sina Weibo to display their condolences and sorrow. We conduct text analysis and sentiment classification to investigate the motivation behind online mourning for Dr. Li among students on Sina Weibo. Our results indicate that, a) there always more than one motivation behind online mourning exists in each time period. b) continuing connection and semi-interaction with the deceased is the main motivation when students mourn online. c) there exists positive correlation between the influence of the deceased and the motivation--sharing information with the community of fans and creating social support in a time of loss and social support. d) the motivation--honoring the dead and expressing sadness and resentment can gradually lose over time.

‘I can't return to the village without my baby': ‘Evil deaths' and the difficulty of mourning in Brazil in the time of COVID-19

Based on the anthropological classification of death into ‘good deaths', ‘beautiful deaths' and ‘evil deaths', and using the methodology of screen ethnography, this article focuses on mourning in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the extreme cases of deaths in Manaus and among the Yanomami people. The article ‘follows the virus', from its first role in a death in the country, that of a domestic worker, to hurriedly dug mass graveyards. I consider how the treatment of bodies in the epidemiological context sheds light on the meanings of separation by death when mourning rituals are not performed according to prevailing cultural imperatives. Parallels are drawn with other moments of sudden deaths and the absence of bodies, as during the South American dictatorships, when many victims were declared ‘missing'. To conclude, the article focuses on new funerary rituals, such as Zoom funerals and online support groups, created to overcome the impossibility of mourning as had been practised in the pre-pandemic world.

The notion of the setting and the extinction drive

The author describes the analysis of a woman patient in the absence of the analytic setting during the long period of confinement due to Covid-19. Bleger's distinctions between the analytic process and the frame are explored in this context, and Green's formulation on the function of the framing structure in the construction and elaboration of phantasy life, as well the function of the hallucinatory wish fulfilment in the movement towards symbolization. The production of a sculpture during this time is on the pathway towards the elaboration of the work of mourning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (French) L'auteur decrit l'analyse d'une patiente, par telephone, dans le contexte du confinement du a la Covid-19, alors que la dimension physique du cadre analytique est absente. Elle interroge la theorie de Bleger et sa distinction entre cadre et processus analytiques ainsi que celle de Green sur la fonction de la structure encadrante et la fonction de l'accomplissement hallucinatoire de souhait dans le mouvement vers la symbolisation. La production d'une sculpture pendant l'analyse amorce l'elaboration d'un travail de deuil. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Care and support for the covid - 19 bereaved family members: The counselor's role

Worldwide, COVID-19 outbreak has been impacting people. The death toll from Covid-19 has reached 57,50,868 globally, with 39,72,59,234 verified cases. In India, there are 4,24,10,976 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and the death toll has risen to 5,05,279. Everyone experiences bereavement at some point during their lifetime. It is a universal sensation. Many find that when they adjust and integrate their loss into their daily life, their level of sadness lessens over time. The grievers or carers may go through deep, persistent, and crippling grief that satisfies the DSM V criteria for Prolonged Grief Condition, a recognised mental disorder. The majority of people adjust after a loss, with two-thirds saying that their financial, emotional, and physical conditions remained unchanged. Severe dyspnea, patient seclusion, visitation limitations, death in intensive care units, anguish of patients/family members, and disruption of relatives' social support networks are the mourning risk factors. The following psychological interventions will be used in this study to attempt to illustrate the treatment, emotional support, and counselling available to bereaved family members and caregivers (Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Art based therapy, Group Therapy, Traumatic Grief Therapy, Complicated Grief Therapy).Copyright © 2023, Anka Publishers. All rights reserved.

Grief and mourning in Covid-19 pandemic and delayed business as a new concept

The measures, restrictions, and death-related rituals in the COVID-19 pandemic have affected the mourning-related routines of individuals. Moreover, mourning processes have been affected by the restriction of death-related cultural rituals, funeral ceremonies performed only by the officials, and the prohibition of visiting graves. This study aims to investigate the experiences of individuals who lost their loved ones in Turkey during the COVID-19 pandemic. For that purpose, the phenomenological method is employed in the design of the study. Individual interviews were conducted with nine participants who lost their relatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected through semi-structured interview forms prepared by the researchers. The study participants described the various factors contributing to the grief and mourning process in the COVID-19 pandemic. These factors were categorized into three following main categories: grief and mourning responses of the individuals lost loved ones, including cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses;risk factors including the expectation of harm, unfinished business, and restriction of death-related religious-cultural rituals;and protective factors including relative support (i.e., family, spouse, friend, partner), tele-support (i.e., mobile phone, internet, social media), positive coping strategies (cognitive, behavioral, and religious-spiritual), and delayed business. The "delayed business” concept was also addressed within protective factors and explained in general terms. Finally, the findings were discussed considering the literature and presented some theoretical and practical implications.

Complicated Grief Processing and Bereavementassociated Psychopathology in First-Degree Relatives of Deceased Covid-19 Patients

Introduction: The number of patients hospitalized and deceased from COVID-19 during the first and second pandemic waves is exceedingly high. Health restriction policies have prevented relatives of ICU patients from being close to their loved ones, especially during the last moments of life. Furthermore, the possibilities of celebrating funerary rites have been radically restricted. Several authors have argued that these circumstances negatively affect the grief process for losses experiencing during the pandemic, leading to the development of severe grief reactions or complicated bereavement. The present work aims to propose a qualitative analysis of the experience and characteristics of mourning, complicated grief, and bereavement linked to the COVID-19 pandemic observed in first degree relatives of deceased COVID-19 patients. The interest in this topic arises from the clinical observations of unique characteristics of COVID-19-related grief and bereavement that emerged during the months of lockdown and restrictions, with an emphasis on pain persistence and unprocessed mourning. Method(s): This work is based on a qualitative research process that analyzed ten clinical cases of complicated grief. People who have lost a loved one during the first two pandemic waves were involved in a remote brief psychotherapy program consisting of eight weekly sessions. Case reports will be presented as a means to illustrate distinct presentations of COVID-related complicated grief. Result(s): Clinical cases are described according to the initial medical history, psychopathological description, and areas of suffering emerged during the process of therapeutic support. Consistently with qualitative studies recently published on the same topic, the authors identified common features in the patients' narratives, which typically involved the dynamics and condition of the infection, the end of life of the loved one, the patient's experience of isolation in intensive unit, and the relative's experience of isolation at home, the lack of final farewell, and the absence or disruption of funerary rites. The sense of guilt about having infected their loved one is a feeling frequently endorsed by patients. The inability to see and speak with the loved one has resulted in feelings of high and persistent anxiety, with moments of despair. Conclusion(s): Death cir- cumstances, isolation of hospitalized patients and domiciled relatives, absence of in-person final farewells all had a strong psychological impact on the way of experiencing the suffering associated with bereavement. Future research should focus on early detection and treatment of enduring psychopathological symptoms associated with complicated grief and bereavement among first-degree relatives of deceased COVID-19 patients.

Childhood Bereavement Amidst Multiple Pandemics

Childhood bereavements are not new and normal, culturally defined mourning processes have always required social support. Unfortunately, COVID-19 – like other pandemics, wars, natural disasters, and famines – has complicated and disrupted normal mourning in both children and adults. I review some of these complications and disruptions and then go on to describe some of the interventions that may be helpful and supportive to bereaved children and their families. While it is important to avoid viewing mourning processes as evidence of psychopathology, it remains true that a sensitive, psychoanalytically attuned approach to mourning may help identify those people who, because of past or present circumstances, may find their bereavements to be particularly disorganizing. That attunement puts us in a position to help individual children, families, and whole communities find alternative ways to do the work of mourning despite the obstacles imposed by pandemics, wars, and natural disasters.

Psychotraumatology of the war in Ukraine: The question of the psychological care of victims who are refugees or who remain in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is a major poly-traumatic event, which leads to massive population displacements. The question of the evaluation and psychological care of psychotraumatised people is an urgent matter. As many countries hosting refugees are well endowed with a number of psychologists, some of these interested professionals should mobilise themselves and make themselves known to carry out these clinical acts. Priority should be given to trained and experienced psychologists to support victims. The language barrier will have to be overcome. Initially, it would be desirable to make contact or get closer to local and national refugee centres to facilitate these operations. Face-to-face or remote consultations, as developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, are possible. Reinforcements of available and dedicated psychologists, including remotely, from the countries hosting the most refugees are also desirable. The issue of detection, assessment and care of psychologically traumatised people who remained in the Ukrainian territory is probably even more massive. Whether non-combatants or combatants, part of the international psychological community should mobilise, in addition to local colleagues, to provide them with this psychological help. These humanitarian actions would be feasible depending on the evolution of the conflict. Whether it is psychological support for refugees or people still on the Ukrainian soil, models for organizing and coordinating these actions must be carefully thought out and implemented in an evolving way to optimise their effectiveness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (French) La guerre en Ukraine est un evenement polytraumatique majeur qui donne lieu a des deplacements massifs de population. La question de l'evaluation et de la prise en charge psychologique des personnes psychotraumatisees se pose de facon urgente. De multiples pays d'accueil de refugies etant bien dotes en nombre de psychologues, une partie de ces professionnels interesses devrait se mobiliser et se faire connaitre pour realiser ces actes cliniques. La priorite devrait etre donnee aux psychologues formes et experimentes pour prendre en charge les victimes. La barriere de la langue devra etre surmontee. Dans un premier temps, une prise de contact ou un rapprochement aupres des dispositifs locaux et nationaux d'accueil des refugies serait souhaitable pour faciliter ces operations. Des consultations en presentiel ou en distantiel, comme cela a ete developpe pendant la pandemie de Covid-19, sont envisageables. Des renforts en psychologues, y compris a distance, des pays accueillant le plus de refugies sont egalement souhaitables. La question de la detection, de l'evaluation et de la prise en charge des personnes psychologiquement traumatisees restees sur le territoire ukrainien est probablement encore plus massive. Que ce soit des non-combattants ou des combattants, une partie de la communaute psy internationale devrait se mobiliser, en complement des collegues locaux, pour leur apporter cette aide psychologique. Ces actions humanitaires seraient realisables en fonction de l'evolution du conflit. Qu'il s'agisse de soutien psychologique aux refugies ou aux personnes sur le sol ukrainien, des modeles d'organisation et de coordination de ces actions doivent etre penses et mis en place de facon evolutive pour en optimiser l'efficacite. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Mourning and restoration

During the endless days of March and April 2020, New York City experienced more than 20,000 COVID-19 deaths and was considered the "epicenter" of a new global pandemic. Nursing homes witnessed the virus's contagion at staggering rates, with elderly and debilitated patients coming in by the dozens, gasping for breath, scared they would die and never see their loved ones again. Our hospital and our lives were quickly transformed. The author spent most of his clinical effort during those months running a new eight-bed hospice unit in our hospital. The author then presents the story of a hospice patient, a fifty-nine-year-old Black male-to-female transgender homeless woman. She had been diagnosed with an aggressive squamous cell carcinoma. She underwent chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery, including a diverting colectomy, leaving her with a permanent ostomy. She had several other medical problems-chronic kidney disease, heart disease, diabetes, major depression, and chronic lymphedema. Taking care in her last days of life was agonizing. The possibility to have spent more time getting to know her. To explore her world and navigate the challenges of her health and condition together. This is the privilege of the doctor-patient relationship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Mourning and the capacity to be alone: Cultural and existential rituals in loss

When I began writing this paper, I was amid coping with several losses. I had lost a beloved friend and a family member to COVID-19, and though it seemed that we were coming out of the woods in the US, the juggernaut virus was burning through my native country of India, where most of my family lives. As a candidate starting analytic training in 2020, Freud's Mourning and Melancholia was particularly poignant as it lays the foundation for object relations borne out of a process of coping with loss. Freud described mourning as an agonizing process of identification, disinvestment and reinvestment. He emphasized the role of intrapsychic factors in the capacity to mourn. Since then, analysts have countered by writing about the highly social nature of the task of mourning and the importance in grieving of a loving communal embrace. In this paper, I explore one's early experiences with Winnicott's holding environment and transitional phenomena as an explanation of the capacity to mourn. I will extend mourning to another form of loss, namely, transience, i.e., temporariness of time and experience. Finally, I will consider how the developmental achievement of the capacity to be alone is inherent in specific intrapsychic modes of mourning transience and could be extended to intrapsychic capacity to mourn in bereavement. I will explore these ideas with a backdrop of traditional Indian rituals and spiritual practices, which embody and uniquely elaborate other essential Winnicottian features, including paradox, dialectics and the third area. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

POETRY IN PANDEMIC TIMES: MOURNING COLLECTIVE VULNERABILITY IN SUE GOYETTE'S SOLSTICE 2020. AN ARCHIVE

Focusing on Canadian poet Sue Goyette's collection Solstice 2020. An Archive (2021), this article examines how dealing with the effects of a global pandemic through the medium of poetry can act as a powerful catalyst in raising awareness about collective vulnerability and mourning. During the locked-down days of 2020, Goyette felt it was her responsibility as a poet to find words to convey the sense of shared vulnerability people experienced in the face of a momentous event that confined them to their homes for days on end. Drawing on vulnerability theory, ecophilosopher David Abram's thinking on the more-than-human world, Stacy Alaimo's concept of trans-corporeality, as well as on recent theorizations on the COVID-19 pandemic, this article argues that Goyette's Solstice 2020 is a most interesting sociological document that represents collective vulnerability, testifies to the conundrums posed by the still ongoing pandemic, and makes visible the deep affinities between humankind and the more-than-human world © 2022,Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos. All Rights Reserved.

How creating art sustained me during the pandemic

In this paper, I describe how my painting practice restored and sustained a more coherent and vitalized sense of self during the isolation, loneliness and sense of unrealness, dislocation, and lost world order brought about by Covid. I describe how the intersubjective and physical process of painting, and the nonverbal, embodied experience of creating art re-situated me in a world that felt real and allowed me to know and reflect on emotional experiences not available verbally until represented in visual, concrete form. I present a brief clinical example to illustrate how my artistic practice during Covid decisively informed an appreciation of the importance of a co-constructed selfobject experience that recognized how essential a patient's own affirmed creativity was for enhancing her sense of vitality, agency, and possibility of positive change.

Revisiting funeral recordings during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK

Especially when travel and gatherings were restricted during the Covid-19 pandemic, filming and live-streaming enabled more people to connect with funerals than could attend in person. Filming has also created another less well considered possibility: of revisiting a funeral via a recording. This Viewpoint outlines a range of experiences and opinions about this practice. We suggest careful attention is needed to both its development and its implications for bereavement care in diverse circumstances. © 2023, Cruse Bereavement Care. All rights reserved.

Children Who Lose a Parent in the COVID-19 Era: Considerations on Grief and Mourning

The death of a parent or caretaker presents children, adolescents, and young adults with an immense loss and challenge. Youth grieving and mourning requires review and reexamination from the perspective of our current times. Many youth have lost parents during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Their parents' deaths stem from various causes of mortality, both related and unrelated to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A parental death by COVID-19 presents a unique situation that contains elements which can lead to traumatic grief and disrupted mourning. Social distancing, travel restrictions, and shifts in funeral and memorial practices all affect avenues for successful mourning. Economic, social, and educational changes and family dysfunction associated with the pandemic have altered the normal supports available to a child in the process of mourning a parent. Knowledge of childhood grief and mourning are reviewed and revisited in light of these pandemic challenges. Opportunities for clinical interventions, both in traditional psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy as well as parent work and consultative roles to schools, hospitals, and other institutions, are discussed.

Where is God when it hurts? Theodicy from the pain of COVID-19

This article attempts to answer the question of God's compassion during and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Many people are asking questions about God's care and love amid situations where they could not mourn the loss of the loved ones and find closure. African philosophy of death, mourning rituals and funeral ceremonies were curtailed or restricted by the government and therefore, mourners were left with wounds because they could not find closure for the loss of their loved ones. The aim is to point out that people are still mourning, as lockdown restrictions limited them from going through a grieving process, and that people, left with post-corona effects, are still asking the reality of God's presence during times filled with pain. The interdisciplinary approach to the reality of situation, press releases and literature review are all combined to locate theodicy during the periods of pain. It is discovered that many who did not mourn and grieve culturally and religiously are still struggling emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. Bereavement processes that were muzzled, can still be addressed theologically. Theodicy, as a theological concept, is utilised as a tool to strengthen faith and hope. Hope remains an anchor that keeps humanity floating above the circumstances. Eschatological hope remains the pillar when COVID-19 is deemed as a contradiction to the goodness of God. The conclusion is that, although the character of God such as love, kindness, empathy et cetera, is questioned, the reassuring message remains that God continues to comfort, guide and heal despite crises facing humanity. Humanity still needs post-grief healing and closure in order to reimagine and reassert normality of life. Contribution: The author aims to highlight the importance of healing during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to answer the question of theodicy during the crises. How does one reconcile the goodness of God and the devastation of a pandemic during and after sufferings the world has experienced when one's socio-cultural structures are challenged?

Pandemic-induced deathscapes: end-of-life, funerary and bereavement challenges for British-Bangladeshi Muslims

Following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, end-of-life rituals and funerals across groups of all faiths and none took on a new character due to government-imposed measures to control disease transmission. This article aims to explore the challenges faced by British-Bangladeshi Muslims in relation to performing end-of-life, funeral, and mourning rituals during the first pandemic wave, underpinned by the perception of a ‘good death'. This group was among those disproportionately affected by Covid-19-related mortality and morbidity. Contextualising the study within a review of the literature on deathscapes and shifting policy responses to multicultural populations in the UK, and using an in-depth qualitative research approach, the article highlights the ways in which pre-existing challenges facing individuals seeking Islamic end-of-life, funeral and bereavement rituals have been exacerbated by Covid-19. The article offers new empirical and conceptual insights into the spatio-temporal dimension of end-of-life and funerary practices performed by British-Bangladeshi Muslims to achieve a good death and the changing nature of embodied and virtual deathscapes triggered by the pandemic.