The grieving process after perinatal loss has unique properties. This qualitative study examines one aspect of the grieving process: continuing bonds experienced by the mothers. We offer an interpretative phenomenological analysis of interviews with 15 Italian mothers. Three main relevant themes emerged: “continuing bonds between externalized and internalized presence,” “a difficult guilt to manage,” and “relationships are crucial support systems.” The first one illustrates the ongoing connections to the deceased on the part of mothers and siblings, the second one explores a fixation on finding the cause of the death and related feelings of guilt, while the third one describes the mothers’ process of elaboration of the event, especially with the support of the husband and the community. The findings highlight unique qualities of continuing bonds after perinatal loss and factors that might influence mother’s griefwork, while also suggesting that psychodrama and art therapy could be useful in the management of this kind of loss.

Unclear communication of inauspicious prognoses may disorientate both patients and their relatives, drastically jeopardizing the planning of palliative care. This paper considers the issue of truth-telling in the communicative problems of nurses and students of nursing with terminally ill patients. The fundamental objective is the analysis of the difficulties related to the lack of truth-telling and how it might impact their professional and personal lives. A qualitative study was realized, involving 47 participants, both nurses (25) and nursing students (22), working in palliative care units or in associations of volunteers for the assistance of oncological patients. The exploration was focused on the way they relate to patients who are not aware of their real health conditions and their consequences. Particular attention was paid to their opinions concerning what could be done in order to manage such problematic situations in the near future.

The systematic removal of death from social life in the West has exposed people living in areas affected by COVID-19 to the risk of being unable to adequately manage the anxiety caused by mortality salience. Death education is a type of intervention that helps people manage their fear of death by offering them effective strategies to deal with loss and anxiety. To that end, a path of death education has been carried out with University students of psychology. The main purpose of the research is to understand how students who participated in the death education course perceive the lockdown experience in light of course teachings. The research was carried out at a University in northern Italy in an area severely affected by COVID-19, during the first year of the pandemic. The group of participants included 38 students, 30 women and 8 men, with an average age of 25.45 years (SD = 7). At the end of the course, the students could respond on an optional basis to the request to comment on the training experience according to what they experienced during the pandemic. A thematic analysis was subsequently carried out on the texts, which made it possible to identify the most relevant thematic areas for the students. The qualitative analyses permitted recognition of three main forms of discovery: the removal of death in contemporary culture; the importance of community, ritual and funeral, and spirituality; and the significance of death education for future health professionals. The texts have highlighted how the removal of these issues exposes people to the risk of being unable to handle extremely painful events such as those related to dying. The results show the positivity of death education pathways conducted at the University level to help students reflect on these issues and manage the related anguish.

Background: Among different ways of coping with the unsettling situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, a very peculiar one has been identified: a more frequent request, by the general population, of movies or TV series related to the very theme of viruses, contagions, and epidemics.Objectives: The aim of the present study was to explore this peculiar phenomenon, in order to identify people's emotions and cognitions during and after the process, and to better understand the possible psychological function cinema can have during moments of intense and generalized crisis like the present COVID-19 pandemic.Participants: Fifteen Italian adults took part in the study – eight women and seven men (average age = 30 years, SD = 10.54). Participants were recruited through social media via a specific announcement, and subsequently, through a “snowball sampling.”Method: For the present study a qualitative approach was adopted, and more specifically, the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) have been followed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by telephone or through online meeting platforms (Zoom or Skype). The written texts obtained from the transcription of each interview were analyzed using thematic analysis with the support of the software Atlas.ti, in order to highlight their fundamental contents.Results: From the data analysis, four main areas of thematic prevalence emerged, which reflected the participants' condition during the pandemic that actually led them to watch epidemic-themed movies or TV series: the need to document themselves concerning the theme of epidemics, the need to exorcize contagion anxiety, the desire to find a character with which they could identify, and the casual condition of finding a peculiar movie related to the theme of pandemics and being interested in it because of the striking resemblance with real life.Conclusions: The findings suggest that cinema could indeed represent a powerful tool to help people face the intense uncertainty of the new COVID-19 epidemic, since it allows spectators to both obtain more insight into the current situation, and to project their fears and uncertainties into the movie or TV series, thus reaching a sort of cathartic liberation that offers them hope toward the future.

This article considers a particular aspect of palliative psychology that is inherent to the needs in the area of attitudes concerning Advance Healthcare Directives (AHDs) among Italian physicians and nurses after the promulgation of Law No. 219/2017 on AHDs and informed consent in 2018. The study utilized a mixed-method approach. The group of participants was composed of 102 healthcare professionals (63 females and 39 males). The quantitative part utilized the following scales: Attitudes toward Euthanasia, the Religious Orientation Scale, the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding, and the Testoni Death Representation Scale. The results were mostly in line with the current literature, especially concerning a positive correlation between religiosity and the participants’ rejection of the idea of euthanasia. However, the qualitative results showed both positive and negative attitudes towards AHDs, with four main thematic areas: “Positive aspects of the new law and of AHDs”, “Negative aspects of the new law and of AHDs”, “Changes that occurred in the professional context and critical incidents”, and “Attitudes towards euthanasia requests.” It emerged that there is not any polarization between Catholics or religious people and secularists: Their positions are substantially similar with respect to all aspects, including with regard to euthanasia. The general result is that the law is not sufficiently understood, and so a quarter of the participants associate AHDs with euthanasia. Discussions on the opportunity for palliative psychologists to help health professionals to better manage these issues through death education courses are presented.