My Future: Psychodrama and Meditation to Improve Well-Being Through the Elaboration of Traumatic Loss Among Italian High School Students

Abstract

This study was designed as an action research aimed to help students to elaborate their feelings of traumatic grief, due to a car accident and a suicide of two of their classmates, in an Italian high school. A death education project was realized in order to prevent the Werther effect. The intervention was based on psychodramatic techniques and meditation with Tibetan bells to encourage reflection on the suffering of traumatic loss, the sense of life, and their future. A total of 89 students from four classes (46 in the experimental group: two classes, 43 in the control groups: two classes) participated in the study, among which 82 (45 in the experimental group, 37 in the control group) completed the pre- and post-test survey. The intervention consisted of eight 2-h meetings, during which the themes of death and loss were dealt with through theoretical discussions, dramatization, and meditation. Two other classes which participated in the assessment as a control group did not attend the activities. The following instruments were used: Death Attitude Profile-Revised, which measures individual attitudes toward death; Psychological Well-being Scale, which measures a person’s psychological well-being; Resilience Scale for Adolescents, which measures the construct of resilience in adolescents; Self-Transcendence Scale, which measures self-transcendence; and Testoni Death Representation Scale, which measures the ontological representations of death. The results demonstrated that in the experimental group, there was a reduction in the fear of death and its avoidance, and that the students normalized the representation of death as something natural, thus improving their well-being. It is consequently possible to say that well-being is not simply the absence of suffering and worries, but rather, is rooted in the possibility of thinking of creative solutions to the trauma.

Effectiveness of Drama-Based Intervention in Improving Mental Health and Well-Being: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Period

“…It is also noted that the results suggested that drama-based intervention was beneficial but not statistically significant for enhancing psychological well-being. For example, a psychodrama programme improved the psychological balance of adolescents who had experienced a traumatic incident; the correlations showed increased psychological progress [ 71 ]. Furthermore, the results may point to the potential role of drama-based intervention in improving communication skills.…”

“… Risk of bias summary for each included study [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 ]. …”

Suicide Prevention: University Students’ Narratives on Their Reasons for Living and for Dying

“…Since this research was carried out before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, future research might explore if and how the pandemic and the consequent changes it brought about might have influenced college students' narratives in regard of their reasons for living and for dying and on potential resources for suicide prevention interventions. To conclude, Death Education in the form of education on suicide prevention can offer young people a space in which to ponder on theirs and their peers' reasons for living and dying and to create their personal narrative on the meaning life has for them [15,16].…”

“…The need for such spaces stems from the changes brought about by the postmodern era, such as a great increase in well-being and the secularization of society with the consequent removal of any form of reflection upon death and human limits [14]. The awareness of finitude, in turn, makes humans appreciate their time spent on Earth, thus valorizing life and strengthening their will to safeguard it [7,15]. DeEd is aimed at creating an appropriate language around death and death-related issues, creating a space to recognize, experience and share emotions and feelings derived by thinking about death, reasoning on human limits and finitude and on the meaning of life, to reduce death anxiety and create a safe space for students to share their learning experiences, together with their thoughts and feelings [16].…”

Interest and Confidence in Death Education and Palliative Psychology in Italian and Indian University Students of Psychology: Similarities and Differences

“…Such self-representation allows individuals to maintain the cultural framework through which meaning is given to everyday life [21]. In fact, giving life meaning and conceiving death as a passage are factors that have been closely linked to lower levels of distress, anxiety, and depression [20,[22][23][24].…”