The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS, 2016c) under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security delineates the complex law and path to citizenship as it relates to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. The USCIS (2016a) makes decisions based on policies and laws that were first introduced in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA was shaped by the McCarren-Walter bill in 1952, which created Public Law 82-414. An extensive policy manual exists (USCIS, 2016b), which provides full disclosure of all policies related to rights, responsibilities, and processes of naturalization, continuous residence, individuals and groups under temporary protected status (TPS), and overall policies related to immigration. This chapter provides transparency to all public, private, and governmental entities. It offers some guidelines to mental health professionals to begin working globally with the new culture of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

Childhood bereavement support is provided by a variety of professionals including chaplains, social workers, mental health counselors, psychologists, child life specialists, nurses, school counselors, thanatologists, and educators. This chapter discusses the issue of professional accountability and ethical considerations when working with bereaved children and their families in order to offer a framework for standards for this important type of support. It is not enough to solely provide orientation training to volunteers, it is also important to offer continued training for both new and existing volunteers. Organizations that provide support to bereaved children should establish written, agreed upon standards of practice to which program staff and volunteers are held accountable. The parent or legal guardian of children attending individual support, peer support groups, or grief camps should be provided a clear description of services being provided. Services provided should fit within the mission, vision, and values of the organization.

Testing and evaluation are typically one of the last areas of mental health practice claimed by psychology alone, but assessment is a critical part of work as a counselor. The wellness-focused approach of the profession is in some ways at odds with the labeling required of evaluation, assessment, and interpretation, but these are an undeniable reality of clinical practice in the era of managed care. The chapter includes seven cases related to a section of the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics examined carefully using the Garcia, Cartwright, Winston, and Borzuchowska’s (2003) Transcultural Integrative model. This chapter highlights the ways in which assessment in general can become a complex area of practice, including, but not limited to, using diagnosis as a tool for billing, validity of assessment instruments administered to clients, diagnosis and wellness principles, and scope of competence.

This chapter suggests that the pathologization/psychologization of grief within the psy-disciplines has had an impact on the way in which mourning is understood and managed in day-to-day life. The psychologization and pathologization of grief is situated within several other cultural and historical movements that have been part of the shifting understanding of mourning as a medical entity. These contexts include the rise of modernism and the focus on the psychological self as a site of meaning and the subsequent fear of death and grief. The looping of grief begins with the psy-disciplines’ construction of it as an individualized, psychologized, and private event. This construction then gets relayed to the public through various representations in mainstream media, including film, television, and newspapers. In contemporary North American culture, television and film are mediators in which people get introduced, immersed, and identify with narratives and themes of their culture.

One’s confrontation with life-threatening illness or death can develop in a number of different ways. One of the most common contexts, and certainly one of the most researched, is when a person learns of a life-threatening illness while seeking medical attention for a troubling symptom. The evaluation of symptoms is likely to be influenced by four sets of factors: symptom-related factors, physical and psychological factors, situational factors, and social factors. The more a symptom disrupts family life, work, or other social activities, the earlier action is likely to be taken. Social and cultural beliefs about the type of treatment that is suitable can also affect the health-seeking process. Understanding the road before is critical. The prediagnostic phase offers a window on patient’s knowledge, fears, social support, and coping behaviors as well as cultural and spiritual beliefs and practices.

This chapter summarizes the major strains of psychology that were important in setting the foundation for death studies by psychologists, and highlights some of the most important contributions made by psychology to the field. Psychology, often regarded as an offshoot of philosophy and biology, traces its origin to Wilhelm Wundt who was what we today would call an experimental psychologist. A parallel track to that of experimental psychology is the development of the psychodynamic approach led by Sigmund Freud. A third school of 20th-century psychology is humanistic/existential psychology. It also focuses on the ability of the human being to mature and develop his or her own positive mental health. William Worden is the first clinical psychologist to differentiate between counseling and therapy early in the development of the field of thanatology. Psychology is made up of developmental, experimental, social, clinical, counseling, cognitive, and many other areas that defy simple classifications.

This chapter provides a brief history of suicide, describes the dimensions of the problem internationally and in the United States, and highlights approaches designed to aid in understanding, preventing, and intervening in suicidal behavior. The ways in which societies have reacted to self-killing has changed across times and cultures. In the United States, the first suicide prevention center was established in Los Angeles in 1958 with a 5-year grant from the U.S. Public Health Service. The center had three major goals: to save lives, to serve as a major public health agency for the community, and to carry out research on suicide. The most common treatment of overtly suicidal people in the recent past has been to treat them with antidepressants with or without talk therapy. It is much more powerful to consider cases holistically by exploring with them their current dimensions of environmental, psychological, cognitive, biological, and spiritual thinking.

This chapter examines medical trauma using the ecological lens to explore how a patient’s unique traits, characteristics, and history contribute to his or her interpretation of a medical experience. It also examines risk factors of the patient. The risk factors include personality, coping skills, past trauma history, preexisting mental health issues, previous medical experiences, lifestyle factors, life stressors, support system, and existential factors. Although much has been written regarding potential risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), there still remains no definitive way to determine who will experience trauma and recover with or without PTSD symptoms. Anxiety and depression are known to be risk factors for PTSD symptoms, and they can predispose individuals to negative evaluations of life events. Personality traits of neuroticism, inflexibility, high judgment, and a careless attitude are the very dispositions that can influence a person to have a traumatic stress response.