Author
Colin
Murray Parkes OBE MD FRCPsych
Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist to St Christopher's Hospice, Sydenham and
Consultant Psychiatrist to St Joseph's Hospice, Hackney. Formerly Senior Lecturer
in Psychiatry, The Royal London Hospital Medical College and Member of Research
Staff at The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.
Author of :
Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life; publ. Pelican, London
and Routledge, London & New York (3rd Ed 1996)
With Robert Weiss, Recovery from Bereavement, publ. Basic Books, New
York & London (1983)
With M. Relf and A. Couldrick, Counseling in Terminal Care and Bereavement
(1996) publ. British Psychological Society.
Also of numerous publications on psychological aspects of bereavement, amputation
of a limb, terminal cancer care and other life crises.
With Dora Black, Scientific Editor of Bereavement Care, the international
journal for Bereavement Counselors, and Advisory Editor on several journals
concerned with hospice, palliative care and bereavement.
Has worked closely with Dr. (now Dame) Cicely Saunders as consultant psychiatrist
to St Christopher’s Hospice, Sydenham since its inception in 1966. Here
he set up the first hospice-based bereavement service and carried out
some of the earliest systematic evaluations of hospice care.
He worked for 13 years with John Bowlby at the Tavistock Institute of Human
Relations and edited books on the nature of human attachments, The Place
of Attachment in Human Behavior (with J. Stevenson-Hinde, 1982 publ Basic
Books, NY) and Attachment Across the Life Cycle (with J. Stevenson-Hinde & P.
Marris, 1991, publ Routledge, London & NY). More recently he has edited Death
and Bereavement Across Cultures (with P. Laungani and W. Young, 1996, publ.
Routledge, London & NY) and, in 1998, with Andrew Markus, a series of papers
for the BMJ which have now been published as a book entitled Coping with
Loss (by BMJ Books). This last is intended for members of the health care
professions.
Formerly Chairman and now Life President of Cruse: Bereavement Care.
He has acted as consultant and adviser following the disasters in Aberfan,
Cheddar/Axbridge Air Crash, Bradford Football Club Fire, Capsize of the Herald
of Free Enterprise and the bomb on the Pan American aircraft which exploded
over Lockerbie. At the invitation of the British Government, helped to set
up a program of support in New York to families from the UK who were flown
out following the terrorist outrages on 11th September 2002.
Recently work has focused on traumatic bereavements (with special reference
to Rwanda where he helped UNICEF to set up their Trauma Recovery Program) and
on the roots in the attachments of childhood of the psychiatric problems which
can follow the loss of attachments in adult life.
He was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty The Queen for his services to bereaved
people in June 1996. |
