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Register Receives $5,000 Grant for Death Notification Work Writer: Catharin Shepard, 706/583-0811, catharin@uga.edu Contact: Alan Stewart, 706/ 542-1263, aeswx@uga.edu
College of Education graduate student Brandon Register has received a $5,000 grant from the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) to expand his work in providing death notification training to rural Georgia law enforcement officers.
Register, a third-year doctoral student in the College of Education’s counseling psychology program, will use the funding to conduct instructional sessions for officers who may not have had training in how to speak with the surviving family members of people killed in automobile accidents. Many Georgia officers feel a great deal of anxiety at this delicate aspect of their job, according to a survey Register conducted earlier this year.
“This can contribute to ineffective ways of talking to family members who are in a delicate emotional state at the time of the notification,” he said.
Register is working with Alan Stewart, an associate professor in the department of counseling and human development services, to develop and implement the program. Stewart has done considerable research into death notification following fatal vehicular crashes, death notification training, the psychological effects of surviving serious crashes and behavioral climatology. He has also studied family emotional processes and the ways in which language can be used to characterize one’s family of origin experiences or to construct healing narratives in the aftermath of a trauma.
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