What are the stages of dying according to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross?
A. Numbing; yearning and searching; disorganization and despair; and reorganization.
B. Accepting the reality of loss, working through the pain of grief, adjusting to the environment without the deceased, and emotionally relocating the deceased and moving on with life.
C. Anticipatory grief, perceived loss, actual loss, and renewal.
D. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Correct Answer: D. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
The most commonly taught system for understanding the process of dying was introduced by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. The book explored the experience of dying through interviews with terminally ill patients and described Five Stages of Dying: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance (DABDA). The model, which was the result of a qualitative and experiential study, was purposely personal and subjective and should not be interpreted as natural law. Rather, the stages provide a heuristic for patterns of thought and behavior, common in the setting of terminal illness, which may otherwise seem atypical.
Option A: Bowlby and Parkes proposed a reformulated theory of grief based in the 1980s. Their work is based on Kubler-Ross’ model. Their model has 4 stages and emphasizes that the grieving process is not linear.
Option B: Woden’s model of grief does not rely on stages but instead states that 4 tasks must be completed by the patient to complete bereavement. These tasks do not occur in any specific order. The grieving person may work on a task intermittently until it is complete. This model is more applicable to the grief of a survivor but may also be applied to a patient-facing death.
Option C: Anticipatory grief is the name given to the tumultuous set of feelings and reactions that occur when someone is expecting the death of a loved one. These emotions can be just as intense as the grief felt after a death. The most important thing to remember is that anticipatory grief is a normal process, even if it’s not discussed as often as regular grief.