Love medicine for the dying and their caregivers: the body of evidence.

We present a body of evidence for love medicine, originating in the shamanic physical/spiritual healing arts, embodying end-of-life (EOL) palliation through relationships of loving, artful witness between caregivers and receivers. We base the conclusions of our professional (doctor) and familial (spouse) practices on the practitioner/research methodology, Appreciative Inquiry , focused on life-affirming experiences, and epitomizing love medicine in 'building' relationship through artful narratives between caregiver and receiver (experiential model), to complement 'taking' clinical histories (biomedical model). Our witness to these healing effects, supported by relevant literature, builds a body of evidence for the power of love in EOL care.

Love letters to the dead: resurrecting an epistolary art.

This article explores the art of letter-writing, specifically to our beloved dead, as a form of autoethnographic research, pedagogy, and care work. As university teachers and qualitative researchers in palliative and end-of-life care, we review the literature and history of epistolary communications with the deceased, as a prelude to writing our own letters. John writes to his long-dead mother and Dorothy to her recently deceased spouse Patrick, each letter followed by a reflective dialogue between us. Through this dialogue, we highlight the potential application of this art, or handcraft, to formal and informal palliative care, and the implications for practice, pedagogy, policy, and research. We propose that such direct, non-mediated, communications can offer a valuable form of healing for bereaved people. The therapeutic potential of letter writing and the abundance of literary and popular culture exemplars of responses from the dead are also largely unexplored in death education and research.

Mindfulness and behavioral parent training: commentary.

We review the description of mindfulness-based parent training (MBPT) and the argument that mindfulness practice offers a way to bring behavioral parent training (BPT) in line with current empirical knowledge. The strength of the proposed MBPT model is the attention it draws to process issues in BPT. We suggest, however, that it may not be necessary to posit automatized transactional procedures in the parent-child interaction to justify the need for better delineation of therapist-parent communication in treatment. Empirically established behavioral processes may be used within BPT to accomplish parent-training goals similar to those proposed for mindfulness training. Yet, Dumas (2005) offers refreshing ideas for enhancing the therapeutic alliance and success with the parents of disruptive children.