Focus Areas

Grantee List

Over two million individuals die in the United States each year. Estimates vary widely as to how many people are directly affected by these deaths, and it is even more difficult to estimate how many of these people will experience complicated bereavement. An important cause of needless suffering is the inadequacy of contemporary support for the experience and expression of grief. Death has become depersonalized in the move from home to hospital, and the personal bonds of family and other societal connections that formerly served to support the grieving have eroded, due to factors such as geographic mobility and age-segregated living arrangements. Too many people today grieve alone, and this isolation intensifies their fears about the loneliness of their own deaths. Some particular communities, moreover, have experienced so many deaths that the need for sustained support in bereavement is increased accordingly. The goal of this funding initiative is to enhance the capacity of individuals and of communities to grieve and to support one another in the experience of grief.