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Many studies on the impact of natural disasters have focused primarily on immediate stress reactions and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms rather than on evacuees' stories of grief and loss. Known categories of grief and loss do not fully capture the experiences of disaster survivors as evidenced by interviews of Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Austin, Texas. This article will describe their experiences through a resultant framework of Disoriented Grief.

Adolescents' exposure to death is high, with approximately 40% of adolescents reporting past year death of a peer. Each of the estimated annual 14,000 deaths of adolescents has an impact on friends, classmates, and peers, with adolescent girls experiencing more peer deaths within a one year time frame than boys. Much of the literature focuses on parent or sibling death but little on the death of a peer. The sudden and unexpected nature of adolescent deaths appears to be a common experience that deeply affects adolescent girls and puts them at risk for a wide range of negative physical, emotional, social, and cognitive outcomes. The author outlines a task-oriented group intervention that meets the developmental, emotional, cognitive, and gender-specific needs of adolescent girls grieving the death of a peer.

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