Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

In modern society death is a touchy subject for most persons. The subject is either avoided or said in euphemisms. There are persons though who study people’s ideas attitudes and emotions towards death, Thanatologists. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, was a Thanatologist from the 70’s who gave insight on what she thought were the stages of what a dying person goes through. These stages are as follows, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She found that the dying patients will go through these stages upon knowing that they are to die and that she found this as a way for the patient to cope with the idea of dying.

When the patient she was speaking with was dying she would try to help them along in their dying process, and ease their mind in the transition to death. As stated in Claudia Chamberlain’s Elisabeth Kubler-Ross talks about her own last stage (http://www.bereavement.org/her_own_last_stage.htm), “Accepting, but "Not Aiding, Death.” was what Kubler-Ross helped patie

nts do, at times the patients would want to give up but instead she helped them live while dying.

While reading the article by Heather Robertson, I found Kubler-Ross to be quite vindictive in how she treated her patients or interviewees in exploring the dying process. At times she would not tell the patient they were dying, closed awareness. Kubler-Ross told Dempsey: "Never tell the patient he is dying. Let him tell you." Did patients' expressions of denial, anger, bargaining and depression merely reflect the fact that nobody, including Kubler-Ross was telling them the truth? They may also simply have reflected the loneliness and uncertainties of being hospitalised. It is hard to know for sure what may have brought the patients to Kubler-Ross’s stages, how she treated them may have definetly had an impact. While interviewing she would provoke them to respond the way she wanted, she had a talent in pushing patients. Cheerful conversations would end up in fearful conversations, while a patient would talk about something aside from death, Kubler-Ross would bring it up in the conversation making the patient uncomfortable. Not telling the

Some topics in this essay:
Heather Robertson, Michele Chaban, Kubler-Ross Thanatologist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Chaban Chaban, Carl Nighswonger, Death” Kubler-Ross, Criticisms Kubler-Ross’s, Despite Kubler-Ross’s, Nighswonger Kubler-Ross’s, anger bargaining, bargaining depression, denial anger, denial anger bargaining, anger bargaining depression, dying process, patient dying, tell patient dying, michele chaban, knowing die, death dying, tell patient, interviewing patients 5-theory, stages dying, patients 5-theory model,