BEHS 380: End of Life: Issues and Perspectives

End of Life: Issues and Perspectives explores death, dying, and bereavement from social, cultural, psychological, biomedical, economic, and historical perspectives.

What BEHS 380 covers

(Formerly GERO 380.) An exploration of death, dying, and bereavement from social, cultural, psychological, biomedical, economic, and historical perspectives. The objective is to clarify one's personal perspective on death and dying, based on a better understanding of end-of-life planning issues, stages of death, and models of care for the dying.

Topics include definitions of death, needs of the dying and their support systems, pain management, palliative and hospice care, end-of-life decision-making, cultural meanings and rituals, suicide, euthanasia, homicide, natural disaster, the economics of death and life-sustaining care, family conflict and coping, bereavement, and grieving.

Typical BEHS 380 assignments

Expect an assignment requiring you to analyze an end-of-life care model or decision-making issue, addressing cultural or economic perspectives on death.

Key topics in BEHS 380

• End-of-life planning and decision-making
• Palliative and hospice care models
• Cultural meanings and rituals around death
• Bereavement and grieving

Writing tips for BEHS 380

Follow the assignment instructions and rubric line by line

UMGC assignments for BEHS 380 are graded against a specific rubric or grading criteria your instructor provides — every requirement has to be visibly addressed. Skipping a requirement because it seems minor is one of the most common reasons a strong submission loses points.

Integrate multiple social science disciplines, not just one

Behavioral and Social Sciences courses like BEHS 380 are explicitly interdisciplinary — evaluators want to see perspectives from at least two social science fields (psychology, sociology, anthropology) genuinely integrated, not a single-discipline analysis relabeled as interdisciplinary.

Apply concepts to a specific culture, population, or case, not humanity in general

Strong work in this discipline is grounded in a specific, named culture, population, or case study — analysis that stays at the level of "humans in general" or "society" without specificity is one of the most common ways students lose points.

Why students seek help with BEHS 380

Students sometimes discuss end-of-life issues using only a personal or medical lens without the cultural/economic perspectives the course specifically requires — the rubric typically wants those additional perspectives integrated.

How GradeEssays helps with BEHS 380

Share your end-of-life topic and rubric, and your writer will build an analysis integrating cultural and economic perspectives alongside medical/psychological ones.

Prerequisites and course context

BEHS 380 has no listed additional prerequisites. It was formerly numbered GERO 380 — a direct cross-reference to the Gerontology discipline (shipped in um24/25). Note: students may receive credit for only one of BEHS 380 or GERO 380.

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