Death And Dying Analysis

Death and dying can be a hard topic to discuss with someone, especially an older adult who is closer to experiencing it than I am. Many people have different attitudes about death, which can be liked with ideas of spirituality and other beliefs. To address the topic of death and dying with Don, I asked him a series of questions that related to his thoughts, emotions, spirituality, and psychosocial level of development. Additionally, I administered two different assessment tools to get a better understanding for Don’s specific beliefs.

To start out the conversation, I asked Don if he had thought about death and dying before. He replied to me that he had thought about it but was not scared of the idea. The only aspect of death that he feared

I believe Don has reached the levels of self-esteem because throughout our discussion, he stated he was proud of his accomplishments. He was proud of the relationship he and his wife shared, as well as the grandfather and father he has been. Don has also reached self-actualization. Don says he is proud of the accomplishments that he has done in life, despite struggling with accepting events that happened in the past. One positive aspect to Don, though, is the fact that he is a realist and factual when he approaches situations. Although Don has achieved the proper levels of self-esteem and self-actualization, he does struggle with a few major events in his life. These events would be traumatic for most people, and I believe that Don is coping with these well. I would say he is meeting the challenges from Erik Erikson’s eighth stage of ego integrity versus despair. He is not afraid of death and takes a realist perspective when encountering past and current

The first assessment was the Spiritual Self-Assessment which helps identify someone’s sense of spirituality (HealthCare Chaplaincy Network, n.d.). While going through the assessment, it became evident very quickly that Don finds value in many different areas of his life. It was evident that Don cherished relationships with his family, spouse, children, friends, and God. He is constantly talking about his family and grandchildren, and during this last meeting it became clear how much his wife means to him. He finds his purpose throughout family relationships, friendships, work, connection with nature, and God again. Don is a religious man and believes in God and that is a common theme in all his answers, as well as being family and friend oriented. He checked almost every box per question. Lastly, when asked to describe the God he serves, he labeled them as kind, all-knowing, loving, gracious and forgiving (HealthCare Chaplaincy Network,