Bereaved parents have higher morbidity and mortality rates when compared to non-bereaved parents. While parental grief is well studied, the complexities of challenges bereaved parents face are not understood. This study describes parental bereavement…
Open and honest communication has been identified as an important factor in providing good palliative care. However, there is no easy solution to if, when, and how parents and a dying child should communicate about death. This article reports how…
Simulation has been shown to improve the preparedness of practitioners in acute care. In this review we evaluate using simulation to prepare practitioners to deliver palliative care in multidisciplinary teams. The Joanna Briggs Institute approach was…
Sibling relationships reflect a unique childhood bond, thus the impact on a sibling when a child is seriously ill or dying is profound. We conducted a prospective, longitudinal qualitative study over two years using interpretive descriptive…
The authors examined psychosocial outcomes following the first year of bereavement, for 51 family caregivers, including both spouses and offspring. Researchers assessed caregivers during palliative care and again during the second year of…
This article investigates children's views on providing peer support to bereaved children. The data (pre- and postinterviews and written documents) come from an action research study of a teacher-researcher and her 16 children aged 10-11 years old.…
The present study investigated the presence and possible predictors of complicated grief symptoms in perinatally bereaved mothers (N = 121) up to 5 years postbereavement. The presence of complicated grief scores in the clinical range was 12.4%, which…
Federal and state government policymakers in Australia are promoting shared decision making in acute care hospitals as a means to improve the quality of end-of-life care. If policy is to be effective, health care professionals who provide hospital…
While our understanding of adolescent bereavement has greatly expanded in recent years, one area yet to be clarified is the relationship between grief following a significant loss and spirituality. This article strengthens our understanding of this…
Investigators of sibling bereavement contend that the death of a sibling represents a unique and intense loss experience. The empirical literature, however, lacks conceptual clarity about the characteristics of sibling bereavement. Metaphors of…
Abstract Specific grief behaviors observed in children ages 4-16 years in the 2 years after the death of a sibling are reported. Using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), the parents of 90 boys and girls rated the occurrence of behavior problems in…
The International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement recognizes the wide variation of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours pertaining to childhood death, dying, and bereavement. The purpose of this statement is, therefore, to identify a set of…
The death of a loved one is a traumatic loss for children, but little attention has been paid to how children's responses vary according to who died--a parent or a sibling. This article reports the findings of a comparison between children's…
This article is a follow-up study of bereaved caregiving male partners of men with AIDS (T.A. Richards & S. Folkman, 1997). The earlier study examined spiritual beliefs, experiences, and practices reported in interviews with 125 caregivers conducted…
A core dynamic by which grief is resolved by parents in Bereaved Parents, a self-help group, is a series of transformations of the inner representation of the dead child in the parent's inner world and in the parent's social world. As the reality of…
To contribute to a better understanding of the utility of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90R; L. Derogatis, 1983) with bereaved samples, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on SCL-90R responses of 97 parents 2 years after the death of…
In most industrialized countries today, the death of a child is a rare phenomenon. When it occurs, however, it is usually within a hospital setting, after the child has received complex and often long-term medical care aimed at curing or controlling…
Spiritual phenomena were spontaneously reported in interviews of 68 of 125 recently bereaved HIV-positive and HIV-negative partners of men who died from AIDS. Spiritual schemas involving beliefs, experiences, rituals, social support, and roles were…
This follow-up study examined how bereaved couples' grief reactions change over time and how the quality of the marriage can predict these reactions for men and women. A group of 31 bereaved couples who 2 to 4 years earlier had lost an infant (…
Canuck Place, North America's first free-standing pediatric hospice of its kind, opened in 1995 in British Columbia, Canada. The province-wide program encompasses a broad spectrum of services intended to support community-based care and provide…
It is currently believed that effective intervention programs can reduce the negative consequences of stressful life events. The purpose of this paper is to describe a three-step process used to develop a theory-based preventive intervention for…
Grounded theory analysis was used to generate an explanation of the phenomenon of meaning reconstruction in the experience of 10 bereaved mothers. The theory that emerged included three phases in the process of meaning reconstruction: discontinuity,…
Developmental changes in children's acquisition of death concepts and in their emotional reactions are reviewed. Moderating variables that may affect the nature of grieving processes after parental or sibling death are discussed, including…
This descriptive study used qualitative methods to look at two aspects of the search for meaning in parental bereavement--the search for cognitive mastery and the search for renewed purpose. One hundred and seventy-six bereaved parents answered…
The purpose of this article is to provide data on a recently developed instrument to measure the multidimensional nature of the bereavement process. In contrast to widely used grief instruments that have been developed using rational methods of…
A comprehensive quantitative review of published randomized controlled outcome studies of grief counseling and therapy suggests that such interventions are typically ineffective, and perhaps even deleterious, at least for persons experiences a normal…
Three assumptions guiding research and clinical intervention strategies for people coping with sudden, traumatic loss are that (a) people confronting such losses inevitably search for meaning, (b) over time most are able to find meaning and put the…
This article compares the outcome and predictors of psychosocial distress of parents bereaved by young suicides, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and child accidents. One objective is to explore whether suicide bereavement is more difficult for…
The purpose of the current study was to document the course and 1-month post-bereavement predictors of both positive and negative psychological states in bereaved gay male caregivers for 3 years following the death of their partners. The results show…
The belief that loss can result in growth has been hypothesized for centuries.Yet, traditional grief theories have viewed grief work as a process of resolving grief and returning to normal. Formal conceptualizations of grief to growth models have…
This article explores the concepts of narrative as story, of storytelling, and of the narrative approach to qualitative research. Within this, I will also examine the social nature of narrative and the implications of this for research. I will look…
Grounded theory methods were used to study the experiences of 8 bereaved fathers whose children received care in a home-based hospice program. In-depth, unstructured interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded for themes and categories. Every…
