|
Psychologists are at times requested to conduct psychological postmortems. This article cites one such case. In this instance, a patient had died by drowning, with aspiration of nasal gastric tube-feeding fluid. The patient was in a nursing home, with hospital staff within hearing and eyesight. The staff did nothing to intervene and stop the drowning incident. Thus, there was not only the fear and panic associated with the suffocation experience, there was the added element of people being present who could have helped, but did not. Such occurrences add tremendous impact to the individual's feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, and fear. The research literature that led to the conclusions in this case are reviewed.
|