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A Swiss-American psychiatrist who defined the five stages of grief theory and was a pioneer in hospice and palliative care.

Elisabeth Kübler was born in Zürich, Switzerland. At 5, she was hospitalized with pneumonia and had her first experience with death when her roommate died. It led her to believe that since death is an inevitable part of life, one should be ready to face it with peace and dignity.

During WW2, 13 years old Kübler-Ross worked as a laboratory assistant for refugees. Determined to become a doctor, despite her father’s objection, she left home at 16 to work as a doctor’s apprentice while volunteering in hospitals, gaining medical experience, and aiding refugees.

When the war ended, she traveled through recovering Europe, doing relief work and helping rebuild communities hurt by the war. The harrowing stories she heard from the survivors led her to dedicate her life to helping others. Another significant impact on her life course occurred when visiting the Majdanek concentration camp in 1946. She noticed that the walls in the children’s barracks were covered with butterflies carved by fingernails and pebbles; it influenced her thinking about the end of life.

On her return to Switzerland, she studied medicine at the University of Zurich and met her husband, Emanuel Robert Ross, an American medical student. In 1958, a year after the couple’s graduation, they moved to the US, where she interned at Community Hospital in Glen Cove, Long Island. Later, she was a resident at the psychiatric ward of the Manhattan State Hospital and worked on a treatment for terminal patients. There, she became aware of the neglect and abuse of the imminently dying, ignored by the medical staff. She established a program focusing on individual care for the terminally ill, which improved the mental health of over 90% of her patients.

In 1962, Kübler-Ross began to work as a junior faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. For the first time, she interviewed a terminally ill young woman in front of a roomful of medical students, educating them that the desire of a dying human was to be understood and not ignored due to their condition.

Two years later, she was appointed an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, focusing on the psychological treatment of terminally ill patients suffering from anxiety. She continued to work toward changing the approach of the medical staff to terminally ill patients by organizing seminars and interviews with terminally ill patients, caregivers, ministers, and people who worked with this community, educating them on how to approach the subject of death with terminally ill patients. Over time, especially after a Life magazine article about her published in 1969, Kübler-Ross’s work received publicity, leading her to focus solely on her work.

That same year, she published her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying, introducing the five stages of grief. Scholarly known as the “Kübler-Ross model,” the theory suggests that the adjustment pattern comprises five steps when facing death – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The model has since evolved into The Kübler-Ross Change Curve, becoming a training method for employees in change and loss.

During the 1970s, Kübler-Ross became a prominent figure in the hospice care movement, traveling worldwide and establishing hospice and palliative care programs. She also co-founded the American Holistic Medical Association and built a healing center in Escondido, California, named Shanti Nilaya (Final Home of Peace). At the time, she became interested in near-death experiences and served on the Advisory Board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.

In the 1980s, Kübler-Ross began to work with AIDS patients who got often discriminated against for their illness. Soon, she realized that despite the common perception that AIDS only affects homosexual men, women and children also contracted the disease, leading her to focus her work mainly on AIDS patients and children facing death.

In 1995, at 69, she retired to Arizona after a series of strokes, stopped treating patients, and wrote books about dealing with death.

With her work, Kübler-Ross has revolutionized the care of the terminally ill and changed the approach toward pain control and death. She helped to found dozens of programs for the terminally ill, including palliative care and hospice care facilities, and pioneered the movement of “treat the dying with dignity.” She died at the age of 78.

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“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Fun Facts

She was one of a set of triplets.
She had two children.
She wrote 24 books on death and dying, including several children's books; they were translated into 44 languages.
In 1972, in the first national hearings on death with dignity, she testified before the US Senate Special Committee on Aging.
In 1977 she was named Woman of the Year by Ladies' Home Journal.
She intended to build a hospice for abandoned infants and children with HIV, but the residence of her town in Virginia prevented her out of fear of being infected with the disease.
In 1997, Oprah Winfrey flew to Arizona to interview her.
She received more than 20 honorary degrees.
In a summary of the century's 100 greatest scientists and thinkers, Time Magazine named her one of "The Century's Greatest Minds" in 1999.
Most of her archives were donated to Stanford University.
In 2007, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation was founded by her son, the photographer Ken Ross.