The oft-quoted phrase, “Sadness is the price we pay for love,” was coined in 2001 by Queen Elizabeth II in her message of condolence to those affected by the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The word was used in , and reached audiences around the world.
But it was psychiatrist Colin Murray Parkes, who has passed away at the age of 95, who first came up with the words that brought solace to so many. In his 1972 book Bereavement: A Study of Grief in Adult Life, he wrote: Maybe that's the price we pay for love. ”
When Parkes first proposed a research project on bereavement in the 1960s, while working as a psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in south London, a professor said: “What you have described is not a project, but a lifetime's work.'' ” he answered. And it was proven.
Noting that grief is rarely featured in the indexes of most popular psychiatric textbooks, he has authored and co-authored hundreds of research papers and published books such as Facing Death (1981). I wrote this. Death and Bereavement Across Cultures (1997). and Love and Loss: The Roots of Grief and Its Complexities (2006). Some of his works were published in his 2015 as The Price of Love.
He is regularly called upon to provide assistance in the aftermath of large-scale disasters and acknowledged that this is distressing. Recalling a visit to the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, where the waste tip of a colliery collapsed on 21 October 1966, killing 116 children and 28 adults, he said: told. Everyone I spoke to was in despair. I couldn't proceed and had to stop the car three times. I just needed to stop and cry. ”
In April 1995, he traveled to Rwanda at the invitation of UNICEF and was asked to help set up a recovery program after the genocide that had occurred in Rwanda the previous year. He witnessed the reburial of 10,000 bodies exhumed from mass graves and felt that his experience in this country would stay with him for the rest of his life.
After the September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, which killed 2,977 people, the family charity Cruise, of which Mr Parkes was lifetime chairman, sent a team to New York to support the families of the British victims. requested to do so. The biggest problem, he recalled, was that it put families through the unimaginable fear that their loved ones would never return. “Families can make it a reality, but it takes a long time. They have to revisit it over and over again and think about it in their own way,” he said shortly after. he said in an interview with The Independent.
He also worked with victims of the 1973 air disaster near Basel, Switzerland, which killed 108 people, mostly women from Uxbridge, Somerset. In 1985, 56 people lost their lives in the Bradford City Stadium fire. Herald of Free Enterprise disaster in 1987 when a ferry capsized near Zeebrugge, Belgium, killing 193 people. In 1988, a bomb exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 243 passengers, 16 crew members, and 11 residents. Parks also traveled to India to assess the psychological needs of those who died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
“One of the scariest things about bereavement is that the world goes on as if nothing happened. For the bereaved, the world will never be the same again.”
Colin was born in London, the son of Gwen (née Roberts) and Eric Parkes, a lawyer. He attended Epsom College in Surrey, after which he attended Westminster Hospital Medical School (now part of Imperial College London) and qualified as a doctor in 1951.
He worked as a junior home physician in Westminster for two years and then at Kettering General Hospital in the Midlands. After two years of national service in the Royal Air Force Medical Corps, he joined the Institute of Psychiatry, based in Moseley.
After publishing research on bereavement in 1962, he joined the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. There he collaborated with psychologist John Bowlby for his 13 years, popularizing his model of grief as consisting of four stages. Pinned; confusion and despair. And recovery.
Parks was also instrumental in introducing bereavement services in hospices starting in the 1960s. He worked closely with Cicely Saunders, “a dedicated mother in palliative care who shared her concerns about the scandalous way in which our fellow physicians treated dying patients and their families.” , was involved in the planning and launch of St Christopher's Hospice, Sydenham. , 1967, South London.
Both believed that good care should involve not only the patient but also the family. Mr Parks set up a bereavement service in which trained volunteers visited families in their homes and organized support groups that included hospice staff. He remained involved with St Christopher's Hospital until his 2014 and acted as a Consultant Psychiatrist until 2007. He also held this role at St Joseph's Hospice in Hackney, East London (from 1993 to 2007).
“He was an outstanding intellectual and had great influence, but he never took himself too seriously,” said Barbara Monroe, former chief executive of St. Kitts' University. “He has always been a great clinician and was very good at talking to patients and staff. And listening.”
In 1975, Parkes left Tavistock to take up the role of senior lecturer in psychiatry at the Royal London Hospital Medical School, from which he retired in 1993. His association with Cruz began in 1964 as a member of the Board of Trustees. He became his chairman in 1972 and became president for life in 1992. Four years later he was appointed OBE.
Parks was the editor of the journal Bereavement from its inception in 1982 until 2019. In 2012, at the age of 84, she urged people to make the most of the last part of her life after receiving the Times/Sternberg Award (which honors achievements for people over 70). work. “Basically I was forced to retire at 65 and got a bunch of cards with old guys fishing on the front. But life is too short to retire and this time has taught me that… “It gave me the opportunity to do things I wouldn’t have done otherwise,” he said.
In 1957 he married Patricia Ainsworth. She and their daughters, Liz, Jenny and Kaz survive him.
