Psychodrama and Moviemaking in a Death Education Course to Work Through a Case of Suicide Among High School Students in Italy

Abstract

This study describes the psychological effects of an experience of death education (DE) used to explore a case of suicide in an Italian high school. DE activities included philosophical and religious perspectives of the relationships between death and the meaning of life, a visit to a local hospice, and psychodrama activities, which culminated in the production of short movies. The intervention involved 268 high school students (138 in the experimental group). Pre-test and post-test measures assessed ontological representations of death, death anxiety, alexithymia, and meaning in life. Results confirmed that, in the experimental group, death anxiety was significantly reduced as much as the representation of death as annihilation and alexithymia, while a sense of spirituality and the meaning of life were more enhanced, compared to the No DE group. These improvements in the positive meaning of life and the reduction of anxiety confirmed that it is possible to manage trauma and grief at school with death education interventions that include religious discussion, psychodrama and movie making activities.

Beyond the Wall: Death Education at Middle School as Suicide Prevention

“…It is then noteworthy that, in the post-test, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in difficulty describing one's feelings and externally oriented thinking, while in the control group, these variables remained unchanged. Consistent with the literature [38,45], the DeEd participants improved their ability to describe their feelings, decreased their externally oriented thinking, strengthened their attention toward internal dimensions and demonstrated their ability to speak about all of this with less difficulty. Although no significant interactions emerged in the resilience components, there was a decrease only in the three components of family cohesion, social competence and social resources in the control group, all of which instead remained constant in the experimental group.…”

“…Furthermore, the construct of alexithymia correlated positively with hopelessness, and a decrease in alexithymia therefore leads to a lower risk of neuroticism and depression and to a positive impact on the construct of resilience [64,66]. In light of this, the intervention had positive effects by achieving the objectives, as supported by the literature [38,45].…”

“…In contrast to this common perspective, DeEd can be taught in the context of formal schooling and approached from a perspective of suicide prevention or the elaboration of traumatic loss because it allows teachers to intervene in the representations of death and address the need to rebuild a sense of life. As some research has already shown, DeEd may be very useful in the management of suicide risk [34][35][36][37]; specifically, when students live in a space in which the trauma of suicide is present, it may transform the risk of the Werther effect into a positive elaboration of death-related thoughts aimed at valorising and reinforcing the meaning of life [38,39]. Indeed, it is important to consider the effect of proximity to suicide experiences and the implicit social construction of its acceptability that needs to be avoided in order to stop the imitative effects that result from identification and familiarity [40].…”

The hospice as a learning environment: A follow-up study of a death education intervention that involved high-school students and the community

“…It also emphasized that the last moments of life can be a time of serenity, with the patient's dignity and respect of paramount importance. The process of reconstructing the meaning of dying allowed teachers to reflect together with the adolescents upon the meaning of the valorisation of life [20,32].…”

“…In the second part, the students visited a local hospice, where they had the opportunity to discuss the forms of dying with the hospice staff, how the patients were supported by the team of palliative care, and how their families handled their grief. The intervention produced very positive results [20].…”