Scott Janssen, MSW, LCSW
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Latest articles
Conditions and diseases
Jack, a seventy-six-year-old hospice patient and veteran of the Vietnam War, had time on his hands. Stuck in a hospital bed, looking back on his life, he was increasingly focused on his time as a young infantryman caught up in…
Jack, a seventy-six-year-old hospice patient and veteran of the Vietnam War, had time on his hands. Stuck in a hospital bed, looking back on his life, he was increasingly focused on his time as a young infantryman caught up in the “catastrophe of war.”
Looking back and taking stock in one’s life is common as patients approach the end of their lives. In 1963, Robert Butler, MD, called this process …
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Combat grief is the wound veterans never mourn
Conditions and diseases
In the United States, as many as 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage (before the end of the twentieth week of pregnancy) and approximately 1 percent in stillbirth (after the twentieth week, including time of delivery). Parents who…
In the United States, as many as 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage (before the end of the twentieth week of pregnancy) and approximately 1 percent in stillbirth (after the twentieth week, including time of delivery).
Parents who experience pregnancy loss are often left to grieve not only the child they never had the opportunity to know but also the loss of a future they had envisioned. The …
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The hidden grief of Black fathers after pregnancy loss
Conditions and diseases
In the weeks after her mother died, Stacy's mind was filled with thoughts about things she believed she'd done wrong and ways she'd let her mother down. "I shouldn't have gotten so impatient with her"; "I should have been kinder,…
In the weeks after her mother died, Stacy’s mind was filled with thoughts about things she believed she’d done wrong and ways she’d let her mother down. “I shouldn’t have gotten so impatient with her”; “I should have been kinder, should have spent more time with her.” She was even tormented by the inaccurate belief that she had caused her mother’s death by failing to “try harder to get her …
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The dangerous impact of cognitive distortions on grieving
Conditions and diseases
Health care professionals working with dementia patients should be aware that a higher-than-average percentage of their patients are likely to have PTSD. Research has found that people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) appear to have a higher likelihood of developing…
Health care professionals working with dementia patients should be aware that a higher-than-average percentage of their patients are likely to have PTSD.
Research has found that people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) appear to have a higher likelihood of developing dementia than those who do not. A meta-analysis of evidence on PTSD and dementia risk, for example, found that people diagnosed with PTSD are up to twice as likely to …
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The hidden connection between dementia and PTSD
Conditions and diseases
I'm sitting in a windowless room in the hospital's urology department waiting for my second prostate biopsy, feeling surprisingly calm and relaxed. It's a surveillance biopsy. Two years ago, the first one revealed "a few scattered cancer cells" while zeroing…
I’m sitting in a windowless room in the hospital’s urology department waiting for my second prostate biopsy, feeling surprisingly calm and relaxed.
It’s a surveillance biopsy. Two years ago, the first one revealed “a few scattered cancer cells” while zeroing in on what turned out to be a harmless nodule. I’d learned then that a prostate biopsy will never make anyone’s list of fun things to do. In addition to being, …
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The power of empathy: a tale of 2 prostate biopsies
Patient voices
"You ever work with vets?" asks the young man sitting across from me in the hospital waiting room. He's been sitting there all morning. So have I. Since 5:30 a.m., my father-in-law, 88, has been undergoing surgery to remove a…
“You ever work with vets?” asks the young man sitting across from me in the hospital waiting room.
He’s been sitting there all morning. So have I. Since 5:30 a.m., my father-in-law, 88, has been undergoing surgery to remove a tumor in his lung. The surgeons just sent word that they’ve finished, and my wife and her mother have gone to the post-op room to see him.
Waiting for them to return, …
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A veteran tells an unexpected story
Conditions and diseases
"You need to get here now!" The nurse whispers anxiously. It's after midnight. One of our hospice patients has just died at home, and her husband is threatening to shoot himself when the funeral home shows up. "Has the funeral…
“You need to get here now!” The nurse whispers anxiously. It’s after midnight. One of our hospice patients has just died at home, and her husband is threatening to shoot himself when the funeral home shows up.
“Has the funeral home been called?” I ask.
“No.”
“Does he have a gun or weapon?”
“We’re out in the country. There are deer heads on the wall.”
I try not to stereotype, but deer heads are a …
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This social worker has no fear
Physician voices
Ben diverts his eyes and wipes away tears, his typical stoicism and iron-willed suppression of emotion giving way to a sea of churning thoughts, feelings and memories. While visiting as his hospice social worker, we’d been talking about his impending…
Ben diverts his eyes and wipes away tears, his typical stoicism and iron-willed suppression of emotion giving way to a sea of churning thoughts, feelings and memories. While visiting as his hospice social worker, we’d been talking about his impending death, walking it through in our minds from the time the funeral home arrived until he’s planted in the ground. We’d talked about death before, and he’d always been cool …
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A patient haunted by war
Conditions and diseases
Sheila’s jaw is clenched. Sweat is beading on her forehead. I make a slow audible inhale, non-verbally inviting her to do the same. We’ve been talking about the nightmares which started shortly after she began receiving help with personal care.…
Sheila’s jaw is clenched. Sweat is beading on her forehead. I make a slow audible inhale, non-verbally inviting her to do the same. We’ve been talking about the nightmares which started shortly after she began receiving help with personal care. I remind her that she is safe — the day she was raped is decades in the past. Her conscious mind knows this, of course, but for people with posttraumatic …
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PTSD can happen at the end of life
Patient voices
"Why don't you talk loud enough for the whole damn hospital to hear you?" I've just greeted my eighty-four-year-old grandmother, and now this irascible voice has erupted from behind the curtain that separates us from whoever is sharing Grandma's room.…
“Why don’t you talk loud enough for the whole damn hospital to hear you?”
I’ve just greeted my eighty-four-year-old grandmother, and now this irascible voice has erupted from behind the curtain that separates us from whoever is sharing Grandma’s room.
The nursing assistant who showed me in glares across the curtain at the other inhabitant.
“You shut up,” she tells the person firmly, “or I’ll smack you with a bedpan.”
Then, she leaves us …
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A hospice worker says goodbye to a loved one
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