Davies, J; (2018) Disabling Grief. Presented at: Ableism in Academia, London, UK.

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Abstract

'Disabling grief in academia' Jason Davies, UCL Arena Centre Grief has been alternatively over- or under-medicalised by the medical industry: most recently the 'bereavement exclusion' was removed from DSM 5, and the link between 'natural grief' and depression is a complex one. Discussion has tended to focus on actual bereavement rather than broader issues of grief, which can be heavily idiosyncratic. Organisational theory has not, to my limited knowledge, addressed the issue of bereavement and grief beyond 'reasonable allowances'. To my limited knowledge, 'compounded grief' has not attracted close attention but I will argue that it is a distinct phenomenon that may require an adjusted approach. Drawing on personal experience as member of teaching staff, I would like to offer an overview of the effects of a protracted series of completely separate grief-inducing events and reflect on how they compound one another. Between 2010 and 2015, I experienced two interwoven work-related and four entirely separate personal/family crises. This had an effect I am informally calling 'disabling grief', whereby crisis in one support system or refuge could not be offset by drawing on other support systems, because they were also in crisis, rather like finding flames in one fire escape after another. The effect of these combinations, as I shall briefly describe, was profoundly disorientating, far more than the sum of their parts, to the point that I had to begin to undergo a profound recalibration of professional and personal identity, surrendering many important aspects of that identity without necessarily finding substitutes. The events were: - threat of redundancy and re-application for my job - protracted bullying at work (formal conclusion) - relationship ending - two unrelated and serious family events (confidential and requiring police involvement) - attempted suicide of my elder son

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