NU 665: Assessing for Grief
NU 665: Assessing for Grief
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Assessing for Grief: Grief and Cultural Expressions in “Minari”
The selected scene from Minari depicts the tension between Jacob and Monica and the deeper emotional struggles associated with immigration, cultural dislocation, and unfulfilled expectations. The narrative shows grief-like symptoms through Jacob and Monica’s strained relationship despite not experiencing a direct death loss. The characters feel significant mourning for their lost sense of self, cultural roots, and emotional support from the American community. The symbolic deaths trigger emotions that correspond to conventional grief patterns.
Symptoms of Grief
The grief symptoms Monica exhibits involve emotional fluctuations, which combine with despair as well as social isolation. The ongoing frustration she expresses about Jacob’s monetary concerns indicates her unfulfilled desires for how her family life should be. The question she asks about how much money Jacob spent on their children contains both remorse and destructive emotions. The combination of her emotional tone with tears and confrontation expresses the experience of ambiguous grief, which can be defined as an invisible yet passionately experienced loss (Wheeler & Crowe, 2020). The symptoms of grieving observed in Monica suggest she mourns her deteriorating marriage, as well as missing family members, and unpredictable immigrant challenges.
Jacob shows evidence of his grief only by his relentless pursuit of achievement. Jacob keeps dismissing questions about his emotions through repeated explanations of his decade-long focus on “chicken butts observation.” As the eldest son in his family, he carries enormous cultural significance because Korean families often expect their male offspring to maintain economic success while hiding their vulnerable emotions. His stoic demeanor and compulsive focus on success indicate that grief is not processed but redirected into productivity—a coping strategy that avoids confrontation with emotional pain (Wheeler & Crowe, 2020).
Cultural Comparison
In Korean culture, emotional expression—especially grief—is often regulated by social norms emphasizing restraint, duty, and harmony. Family traditions in Korean culture would likely describe emotional pain experiences as disruptive while considering them dishonorable, especially when males display such emotions (Kang et al., 2021). Through strong restraint, Jacob handles sorrow internally while upholding his responsibilities first.
My culture teaches people that grieving should be handled through shared emotional expressions between family members. My family uses combined storytelling sessions along with prayer times and emotional crying when dealing with emotional hardship or death to heal themselves as a group. Through confrontational modes of expression, Monica reveals her emotions instead of keeping them hidden, which stands as an indicator that she wants people to acknowledge her suffering and help her recover from it (Wheeler & Crowe, 2020).
Psychiatric or Adaptive?
The emotional intensity portrayed by Jacob and Monica fails to fulfill the conditions required for psychiatric illness diagnosis. Their expressions display typical grief reactions that emerge from the challenges of immigration and domestic tensions. Pathological grief occurs when distress lasts a long time, causes significant functional impairment, or involves psychotic elements as defined by DSM-5 criteria (Varshney et al., 2021). The emotional distress they experience, though disruptive, is proportionate to the relational and existential pressures they face.
This case shows that grief does not exclusively occur after death, as individuals can experience it when they undergo cultural displacement and experience strained relationships and identity loss. Under immigrant circumstances, Monica and Jacob display typical emotional responses that align with their coping methods, besides reflective influences of cultural traditions (Kang et al., 2021). Their authentic suffering exists, yet their emotional responses represent typical human behaviors that fall within generally accepted norms.
References
Kang, J., Kang, S., Jeong, E., & Kim, E. (2021). Age and Cultural Differences in Recognitions of Emotions from Masked Faces among Koreans and Americans. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(19), 10555. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910555
Varshney, P., Prasad, G., Chandra, P. S., & Desai, G. (2021). Grief in the COVID-19 times: Are we looking at complicated grief in the future? Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 43(1), 70–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0253717620985424
Wheeler, K., & Crowe, M. (2020). Interpersonal Psychotherapy. Psychotherapy for the Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurse: A How-To Guide for Evidence-Based Practice, 419.
NU 665: Assessing for Grief
Value: 100 points
Due: Create your initial post by Day 3, and reply to at least two of your peers by Day 7.
Grading Category: Discussions
Note: In this type of discussion, you will not see the responses of your classmates until after you have posted your own response to the following question.
For this discussion, watch the videos and complete the readings. Select one of the videos to focus on for the discussion.
Initial Post
- Identify the symptoms of grief in the individual(s) in the video that you watched. How do these symptoms compare to expressions of grief in your own culture or family?
- Assess if the individual(s) in the video that you watched has a psychiatric illness or if their symptoms are within an adaptive range for grieving for that group/culture.
- Support and substantiate your information with evidence from the last five years.
Replies
Reply to at least two of your peers. In your reply posts, debate with at least two peers regarding their decisions. Provide other evidence that suggests their conclusions may be correct or incorrect.
Please refer to the Grading Rubric for details on how this activity will be graded.
The described expectations meet the passing level of 80%. You are directed to review the Discussion Grading Rubric for criteria which exceed expectations.
Week 14: Learning Materials
Readings
Required
- American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, Text Revision (5th ed.). (DSM-5-TR) American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0-89042-576-3 (WO 1)
- Review and utilize throughout the course as needed.
- Anxiety, grieving, bereavement
- Boland, R., Verduin, M., & Ruiz, P. (2021). Kaplan and Sadock’s synopsis of psychiatry: Behavioral sciences/clinical psychiatry (12th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.
- Chapter 29: End of Life Issues and Palliative Care (WO 1, 2)
- Villarreal-Davis, C. E., Watts-Figueroa, C. M., & Turner, R. (2021). Serving together: Play therapy to foster attachment for grieving military families. International Journal of Play Therapy, 30(4), 231–243. (WO 1, 2)
- Wheeler, K. (2020). Psychotherapy for the advanced practice psychiatric nurse: A how-to guide for evidence-based practice (3rd ed.). Springer.
- Chapter 10: Interpersonal Psychotherapy
Recommended (WO 1, 2)
- Varshney, P., Prasad, G., Chandra, P. S., & Desai, G. (2021). Grief in the COVID-19 times: Are we looking at complicated grief in the future? Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 43(1), 70–73.
