BEREAVEMENT IN AFRICAN AMERICAN AND APPALACHIAN ELDERS

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DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from applicant's abstract) This application seeks support to add to the understanding of the experiences of elderly, bereaved spouses of African American and Traditional Appalachian heritage in the rural south. This ethnographic study is aimed at gaining knowledge about the traditional ways in which members of these undeserved and poorly studied cultural groups deal with bereavement. During this three-year study, data will be gathered from approximately 18 informants. The informants will be identified through a hospice program. The investigator as a volunteer for the hospice, will gather data in the informants' homes and communities using participant observation techniques.Hospice volunteers often become quite close to the families they help. Volunteers are involved in the physical care of the dying person and help with domestic chores such as shopping and cleaning and maintaining the home. After the death, volunteers attend the funeral, wake, or other mourning rituals and often become an emotional support person for the bereaved.Because of this intensive and extended (contact with informants will be maintained for up to two years) data collection, considerable knowledge should be generated concerning bereavement (the time it takes to recover from loss), grief (the emotions of bereavement), and mourning (the rituals of bereavement). Data in the form of field notes and transcribed interviews will be treated as texts and will be subjected to a hermeneutic analysis. In this multi-step process of interpretation and categorization of data, the texts will be examined in detail and the most significant or exemplary datum will be identified and organized into the themes that characterize the bereavement of these informants. This research, which will describe the traditional methods used by these two cultures for dealing with bereavement, is the first step in a program of research that will eventually: (a) identify those characteristics of person and environment that make people vulnerable because they inhibit traditional methods of handling bereavement from being successful, and (b) will design and test nursing interventions for these vulnerable people.