A death psycho-education programme for primary school children

Abstract

Death is another side of life, which influence a person in their different life stage. In Hong Kong, non-governmental organizations and universities do provide programmes in introducing death. However, the target participants of those experiential-learning programs and seminars are mostly adults or upper level students. There is a lack of death education for young children. In addition, guilty feeling is a typical outcome of egocentricity of children who encounter death of their family members. In order to help young children deal with their emotions related to death, a story with death theme of a little mouse Jack was created with vivid illustration of colorful cartoon figures. An accompanying guideline is available for parents, counsellors or social workers to refer to when they interact with children in telling the story. This study reported a story-telling death psychoeducation session with eight children between the age of six to eight who have not experienced the loss of family members or relatives before. Smilansky Questionnaire for Examination of Development of Concept of Death and Participants’ assessment were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the session. The empirical results supported the intervention in a positive way. The pre and the post results of the Smilansky Questionaire showed that the children demonstrated statistically better understanding of cessation and causality of death. Thus, we hopes to show this death psycho-education programme with wider public to promote the awareness of and share insight of death education with young children in Hong Kong community. Keywords: death, psychoeducation, guilt, cessation, death causality, death irreversibility, death inevitability, death cessation.