ABSTRACT
Traumatic deaths may contain elements of (a) suddenness and lack of anticipation; (b) violence, mutilation, and destruction; (c) preventability and/or randomness; (d) multiple deaths; and (e) the mourner’s personal encounter with death (Rando, 1993). Traumatic deaths could be due to war, suicide, homicide, accidents, sudden infant death syndrome, terrorism, pervasive epidemics, genocide, and natural disasters. Traumatic loss differs from nontraumatic loss in the psychological impact (Kauffman, 2002a). How people historically understood and how they understand responses to traumatic death diverge in some cases and converge in others.
