Educational Media Reviews Online

Consisting of interviews with five people who tell their stories of coping and grieving the death of a family member, Those Who Stay Behind is a first-rate choice for library collections. The program is designed to be used with people in the midst of the grieving process or as a training tool for those who work with this population. The accompanying Family Handbook includes both "Notes for Professionals" and "Notes for Families" outlining various ways to facilitate use of the video and issues to stimulate thinking and discussion.

Those Who Stay Behind is divided into seven sections: "Learning Bad News", "Caretaking Decisions", "Talking with Others", "Taking Care of Each Other", "Advance Directives and Later Decisions", "Letting Go", and "Those Who Stay Behind." Through each of these stages of the dying and grieving process the emphasis is on recognizing that everyone experiences it differently. Communicating with various family members can be difficult when people are in different phases of acceptance. At the end of each section a brief reinforcement of important concepts is reviewed by narration and text on the screen.

This program shines at bringing out individuality and its importance in the grieving process. The producers brilliantly chose five different people to relate their experiences, each illustrating that while everyone's experience is different, almost everyone will endure it at some point in their lives.

A superb offering from the quality Fanlight Productions, this program is highly recommended for collections in the health sciences, particularly those specializing in thanatology and bereavement, social work and psychology.