The Five Stages of Grief/The Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Model

The model was first introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, and was inspired by her work with terminally ill patients. Motivated by the lack of curriculum in medical schools on the subject of death and dying, K bler-Ross examined death and those faced with it at the University of Chicago medical school.
Kubler-Ross' project evolved into a series of seminars which, along with patient interviews and previous research, became the foundation for her book. Since the publication of On Death and Dying, the Kubler-Ross model has become accepted by the general public; however, its validity is not consistently supported by the majority of research.

Kubler-Ross claimed these stages do not necessarily come in order, nor are all stages experienced by all patients.
She stated, however, that a person always experiences at least two of the stages. Often, people experience several stages in a "roller coaster" effect switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it. Women are more likely than men to experience all five stages.

However, the Kubler-Ross hypothesis holds that there are individuals who struggle with death until the end. Some psychologists believe that the harder a person fights death, the more likely they will be to stay in the denial stage. If this is the case, it is possible the ill person will have more difficulty dying in a dignified way. Other psychologists state that not confronting death until the end is adaptive for some people.

The 5 stages of grief and loss are:

1. Denial And isolation	Here
2. Anger	Here
3. Bargaining	Here
4. Depression	Here
5. Acceptance	Here

*People who are grieving do not necessarily go through the stages in the same order or experience all of them.
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