Hello everyone :)
I am back from a brief leave to shine a spotlight on the legendary Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' 5 Stages of Grief model. This model has become a pet favorite in pop psychology, but it's massively, massively misquoted and misunderstood. People commonly mess up on two aspects of this theory: the intended population, and the progression of stages.
Kübler-Ross first published her stages of grief model in 1969, in her book On Death and Dying. While we often reference the five stages in the context of losing a loved one, they were first designed to describe the experience of people dying from terminal illness. Kübler-Ross identified five experiences that many folks pass through as they process their own imminent death from terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We commonly reference these stages as progressive states to pass through in order, but they were not intended to describe such an experience.
"Though the stages are frequently interpreted strictly, with an expectation that patients pass through each in sequence, Kubler-Ross noted that this was not her contention and that individual patients could manifest each stage differently, if at all" (Tyrrell, Harberger, Schoo & Siddiqui, 2023).
Criticism of the model tends to emphasize its qualitative origins and its approximation of a complex emotional experience, but we can't deny the model's longevity, accessibility, and impact. What do you think about this model of grief, and do you use it in your work?
For this post I used the following article:
Tyrrell P, Harberger S, Schoo C, et al. Kubler-Ross Stages of Dying and Subsequent Models of Grief. [Updated 2023 Feb 26]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2023 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507885/
If you want to learn more about grief or Thanatology (the science of grief), check out this amazing podcast episode: https://www.alieward.com/ologies/thano2022