“Dulling the Edges”

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 2011

There is a scarcity of research on men's experience of bereavement (Reiniche, 2006), particularly in relation to qualitative research that focuses on the meaning of such an experience. This paper seeks to address this scarcity by presenting the findings from a phenomenological study of the lifeworlds of a small number of bereaved men. The study looked specifically at how the loss of a spouse influences men's experience of meaning, grief and loss. Three men aged between 32 and 54 years old who had all lost their partners to cancer between 3 and 7 years ago were interviewed. The hermeneutic phenomenological method of Van Manen (1990) was used to uncover three key themes, labelled grief and self-reflection, meaning of life and loss, and refiguring the life-world. These themes are discussed in the light of broader existential concerns and the extant literature.

Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 2023

Issue Addressed: Three years have passed since the Australian Government's Department of Health released its National Men's Health Strategy 2020-2030. Presently, little evidence is available to show whether the strategy has achieved success in rectifying men's mental-ill health, particularly the experience of stigma when expressing vulnerable emotions such as grief. Concurrently, research within the field of psychology continues to show that men experience significant pressure to conform faithfully to their socialised gender role. Given the focus to better men's mental health in Australia, this study ascertained people's perceptions of men experiencing grief. Methods: The study adopted social constructionism to explore how participants perceived a fictious character living with grief using a hypothetical vignette by way of convenience sampling. Nine males and seven females who resided in Australia participated in answering seven questions concerning the character's experience of grief. Results: Inductive thematic analysis yielded three themes which collectively represented perceptions of masculinised grief. Notably, avoid stigma by fixing grief, avoid stigma by quickly getting over grief, and avoid stigma by suppressing the expression of grief.

Addiction Research & Theory, 2016

Bereavement following a drug and/or alcohol-related death has been largely neglected in research and service provision, despite its global prevalence and potentially devastating consequences for those concerned. Whilst researchers have drawn attention to the suffering experienced by families worldwide in coping with a member's substance misuse, this article highlights the predicament of families bereaved following a substance misuse death. To this end, it reviews literature drawn from addiction and bereavement research that sheds light on this type of loss. The article also considers how general bereavement theory may illuminate bereavement following a substance misuse death. We argue that available frames of reference reflect not only a lack of focus on this type of loss, but also a tendency to reproduce rather than interrogate normative assumptions of bereavement following 'bad deaths'. The article concludes by considering how findings from existing literature can guide future research.

Death Studies, 2018

The focus in grief theories has been increasingly shifting toward questions of meaning. In this study, we draw on the meaning-reconstruction model of grief for studying the unique case of hard drug users who have experienced a drug-related death. The social context of hard drug use, as well as the death and grief circumstances, is problematic and stigmatized. Grief narratives of 10 respondents were analyzed according to the principles of grounded theory. We identified four main themes: (1) the inhibition of emotion by drugs leading to fragmented grief reactions, (2) social exclusion and notions of disenfranchized grief, (3) the acceptance of death, and (4) meaningfulness in a "biography of losses." Connecting these results with the literature on meaning, we find that meaning-making is a multidimensional and layered process, where some layers result in meanings made while others do not. Finally, this study emphasizes the importance of social and emotional aspects of grieving, as well as the ambiguity of the notion of successful meaning-making in relation to grief.

This article takes a socio-cultural approach to examining creative responses to a traumatic death and loss and their contribution to further understanding of grief, identity and post-mortem bonds. Based on qualitative interviews with family members bereaved after a drug or alcohol-related death, the article explores how, in circumstances which threaten identity and continuity of being, grief may find expression through public and private creativity. Indeed, such creativity was apparent despite negative cultural representations of such deaths invalidating the grief of those left behind, who may suffer profound guilt, isolation and disturbing memories. Whilst interviewees reported such negative effects, psychologically considered symptomatic of complicated grief disorder, they also conveyed creative responses to negative stereotypes, rebuilding identities and continuing bonds. These responses, through which interviewees communicated both vulnerability and resilience, revealed a complex and nuanced picture of grief following traumatic loss.

Addiction Research & Theory, April 2014; 22(2): 126–136, DOI: 10.3109/16066359.2013.785533, 2014

This article deals with masculinities in drinking by analysing how focus groups from Sweden and Finland discuss male and female drinking in diverse drinking situations. It argues that women’s strengthened independency in working life, their increased drinking in domestic and public settings, and their entrance into drinking situations that used to be male dominated have challenged the cultural domination of traditional masculinity in drinking and made drinking styles a more diverse and heterogeneous phenomenon within and across gender groups. The analysis shows that the focus groups construct masculinities in which manhood is associated with creativity, depression, violence, virility, flaneurism, nurture, homosociability, busi- ness masculinity and weakness. These masculinities oppose, interlace or intermingle with femininities and change the shape depending on the situation, drinking company and the perspective of the viewer. Their broad spectrum shows that, in Finland and Sweden, there are multiple independent and strong drinking masculinities and femininities, none of which is given a self-evident hegemony over the others. Thus, the study points out that the mascu- linities and femininities of today are not reducible to any single hierarchy of dominant and subordinate masculinities. For the current hegemonic masculi- nities, it seems to be typical that they vary locally, regionally and globally, intersect in specific ways with class, age and generation, and form multidi- mensional, paradoxical and tension-driven relation- ships with each other and with femininities.

Illness, Crisis & Loss, 2015

This article takes a sociocultural approach to examining creative responses to a traumatic death and loss and their contribution to further understanding of grief, identity, and continuing bonds. Based on qualitative interviews with family members bereaved after a drug- or alcohol-related death, the article explores how, in circumstances which threaten identity and continuity of being, grief may find expression through public and private creativity. Indeed, such creativity was apparent despite negative cultural representations of such deaths invalidating the grief of those left behind, who may suffer profound guilt, isolation, and disturbing memories. While interviewees reported such negative effects, psychologically considered symptomatic of complicated grief disorder, they also conveyed creative responses to negative stereotypes, rebuilding identities, and continuing bonds. These responses, through which interviewees communicated both vulnerability and resilience, revealed a compl...

Health & social care in the community, 2015

The potential for young men in crisis to be supported by their lay networks is an important issue for suicide prevention, due to the under-utilisation of healthcare services by this population. Central to the provision of lay support is the capability of social networks to recognise and respond effectively to young men's psychological distress and suicide risk. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore young men's narratives of peer suicide, in order to identify how they interpreted and responded to behavioural changes and indications of distress from their friend before suicide. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted during 2009/10 with 15 Irish males (aged 19-30 years) who had experienced the death by suicide of a male friend in the preceding 5 years. The data were analysed using a thematic approach. Through the analysis of the participants' stories and experiences, we identified several features of young male friendships and social interactions that cou...

2005

Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy