"Living in poverty is living with loss"

(Image: Pixabay CC0) Thursday, April 29, 2021 — People in poverty often experience a mixture of losses. However, scientific literature studying loss and grief in relation to poverty appears to be virtually non-existent. With her doctoral research, Karen Puttemans of VUB's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences wants to fill this gap. Puttemans: " I asked people living in poverty and social workers if and how they thought poverty, loss and grief interact. In their responses, many emphasised the strong interconnectedness of these phenomena. But because poverty is often delineated as low income, and grief only as a consequence of loss through death, this interconnectedness remains largely out of focus. Her research has now also appeared in book form, " Living in Poverty is Living with Loss: An investigation of contextually situated knowledge about connections between loss, grief and poverty '.