KHARON

Thanatology Review

Electronic Journal

Content

Volume 16

Number 4 · 2012

Original article


 SZILVIA ANNA KISS
SZILVIA ANNA KISS

negyedéves pszichológia szakos hallgató

kiss.szilvi.anna@gmail.com

Touched by grief

The role of touching habits in the process of mourning

Abstract · In our lives we all experience various losses, whether we lose our job, our confidence in a friend, experience a break in a relationship, go through a divorce or we lose an important person. We know a lot about grief work in general from original therapeutic records and from secondary literature, but very little about the touching habits of mourners. What kind of touching habits used to characterize the relationship of the mourner and the deceased? Regarding the quality of their relationship: Is the mourner really able to let the loved one go? Has there been a significant change in the person's attitude to touch after the loss? To answer these questions, I made half-structured interviews with 20 young adults who were mourning their parents. For the purpose of exploring the grief work I devised a new scale, to explore the habits of touching I have adapted the original set of the Seven Touch Scale (Brennan et al., 1998) and in addition, I applied the five love language test of Gary Chapman (2003).

 DÁNIEL TAMÁS KOVÁCS
DÁNIEL TAMÁS KOVÁCS

orvostanhallgató

tronir13@yahoo.com

Game Over

Vision of Death in Videogames

Abstract · If someone has ever played a videogame there is a big chance that their character died. Or if we look at the storyline of a game, there is a great chance that one or two of the characters die. How do videogame developers illustrate these deaths? How does this affect players? Furthermore, why do we have to die in a videogame? I have been seeking answers for these questions in books about videogames, as well as in articles on the Internet and in video materials. In my essay I analyze two types of death in details: the death of the player's character and its influence on the storyline of the game, and deaths occurring in video game storylines as narrative deaths.

We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.

(GLaDOS, Portal)
 JÚLIA VASZARI
JÚLIA VASZARI

vaszarijulia@gmail.com

The potential impact of the television series ER on attitudes to pain relief

Abstract · During my research, I examine a possible special effect of the media, in particular the television series ER, one of the most popular American television series dealing with hospital cases. The purpose of this study is to analyze episodes in which special beliefs can be observed about pain or the use and efficiency of painkillers. As research in recent years has revealed, such beliefs are often mistaken or overestimate the risk of taking painkillers. In purpose of this, I developed a video montage on the relevant details of the TV program, containing the topic of pain and painkilling solutions. I showed the montage to the participants in the study, who I recruited with a sampling of convenience. In the next stage of the procedure, the participants filled out a questionnaire about this montage, which I developed using Barriers Questionnaire II (Gunnarsdottir, Donovan, Serlin, Voge and Ward, 2002) - a questionnaire examining the barriers to analgesics in the patient. When analyzing the results, I analyzed the various types of pain associated with analgesia and the correlations of the series by batch. There were significant results for several items that could lead to the conclusion that the picture painted in the series can provide a basis for over-estimating the degree or significance of rapid acclimatization to painkillers and can lead to a false understanding of addiction and to the formation of negative attitudes to painkillers. In addition, the series depicts painkillers as dangerous and unsafe in general, even though efficient in the special case of cancer pain relief. These findings are statistically significant and underline the impact of the television series ER on the perception of pain relief.