Current Approaches to Helping Children Cope with a Parent's Terminal Illness

Christ, Grace; Christ, Adolph E.

doi:10.3322/canjclin.56.4.197

Cited by 114 publications

(139 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…I don't know that there is a ''good'' time for him to experience more loss, but I want to be there for him as long as I can be. ( Although the self-help literature provides some sense of how mothers experience life with cancer and metastatic disease, the clinical literature appears generally uninterested in mothers' experiences; instead, it focuses primarily on the impact of a parent's metastatic cancer on the children themselves (e.g., Wellisch 1985;Christ et al 1993;Welch, Wadsworth, and Compas 1996;Faulkner and Davey 2002;Huizinga et al 2003;Rauch, Muriel, and Cassem 2003;Christ and Christ 2006). Studies often consider parents' perspectives on their children's adjustment rather than their own experience of parenting while living with a terminal illness (e.g., Siegel et al 1992;Welch et al 1996).…”

Section: Cultural Conceptions Of Mothering and Metastatic Cancermentioning

confidence: 98%

Metastatic Cancer and Mothering: Being a Mother in the Face of a Contracted Future

Bell

Ristovski-Slijepcevic

2011

Medical Anthropology

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For the majority of people diagnosed with metastatic cancer, there is little hope of a disease-free future. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a support group for women with metastatic cancer, we examine the relationship between metastases and mothering. We argue that the experience of raising children while living with a terminal illness crystallizes cultural expectations about mothering based on an essentialist model of parenthood whereby the person best suited to raise children is their biological mother. These expectations create an irresolvable gap between discourse and experience that both increases the suffering of women raising children and generates an internal hierarchy of suffering among women with cancer metastases that hinges on the distinction between those who have dependent children and those who do not.

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Section: Cultural Conceptions Of Mothering and Metastatic Cancermentioning

confidence: 98%

Metastatic Cancer and Mothering: Being a Mother in the Face of a Contracted Future

Bell

Ristovski-Slijepcevic

2011

Medical Anthropology

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“…86 For example, it is common for children to feel guilty because they believe themselves responsible for a parent's death, or to be hurt by a terminally ill parent whose inability to play is interpreted as withdrawal of love. [87][88][89] It is reasonable to infer that children with ID, like other children, should be provided comprehensible, age-and intellectappropriate information about illness and death. 77,90,91 Similarly, children with ID would also benefit if families were more open in communicating about their feelings following a loss.…”

Section: Communicating About Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grief and its Complications in Individuals with Intellectual Disability

Brickell¹,

Münir²

2008

Harvard Review of Psychiatry

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Bereavement and loss have significant impact on the lives of individuals with intellectual disability (ID). Although there is a growing impetus to define the symptoms of grief that predict long-term functional impairment, little is known about maladaptive grieving among individuals with ID. We examine the literature concerning the phenomenology of traumatic grief (TG) in the general population, along with what is known about the manifestations of grief in individuals with ID. We then apply modern theories of grief and grief resolution to individuals with ID in order to highlight potential areas of vulnerability in this population and to lay the groundwork for interventions that will facilitate their adaptation to loss. We provide a theoretical framework for the proposition that individuals (including children and adults) with ID are more susceptible to TG, based on an increased risk of secondary loss, barriers to communicating about the loss, and difficulty finding meaning in the loss. We conclude that individuals with ID should be considered as potential candidates for targeted bereavement interventions. Further research is required, however, in order to develop population-appropriate measurement scales for testing these hypotheses. Keywords grief; bereavement; intellectual disabilityEarly psychodynamic theories of grief suggest that only those who are capable of understanding the finality of death, and who are able to perform the arduous psychological task of withdrawing emotion from the deceased, will be capable of mourning. [1][2][3][4] Even without a cognitive understanding of death, however, it is possible to notice the absence of a loved one and to react emotionally to that loss. In his formulation of attachment theory, John Bowlby 5-7 provided the first theoretical framework for the proposition that even young children can grieve following the loss of an attachment figure. Since then, studies have confirmed that children react with grief, sadness, and despair to the death of loved ones. 8 Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) have long been considered incapable of griefjust as young children once were. It has been suggested that individuals with ID * do not possess either the necessary capacity to form meaningful relationships 9,10 or the necessary

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“…al., 2012, p. 237). However, there has been limited documentation of children's adjustment to a cancer diagnosis in the family (Christ andChrist, 2006, p. 1999;Davey et. al., 2005, p. 247;Finch and Gibson, 2009, p. 214;Kornreich et al, 2008, p. 65;Lewis and Hammond, 1996, p. 456).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“She looked like an Alien”

Saat¹,

Hepworth

Jackson

2018

AJIM

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the Malay children’s information needs from their experience with parental cancer using information behaviour techniques to elicit sensitive information that provided an indication of what children were thinking. Design/methodology/approach Data collection adapted the participatory action research method and used participatory-based techniques that included drawings, essays and interviews. Data explication used an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach. Social constructionism, learning theory and cognitive theory were used to analyse the data. In total, 32 participants took part, ten mothers with breast cancer at different stages of their cancer journey, and 32 children between 6 and 18 years old. Findings There are shortcomings in the provision of cancer information for Malay children. Unlike verbose and difficult to digest medical definitions and descriptions about cancer and its treatment, the Malay children defined cancer as having components made from their experiences and observations about how cancer affected their parent. The findings explain the relationship between children participants’ reaction to a health situation and the subsequent processes they undergo to resolve their state of information need. Originality/value It highlights the importance of determining information needs and the combined methods used to gain and interpret the experience children face with a parental cancer diagnosis. The findings about ethnic-based information problems, needs and provision for dependent children of cancer patients are one of the original contributions of this research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is believed to be the first in-depth qualitative and highly participative study of the implications of cancer for dependent children of Malay cancer patients.

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Current Approaches to Helping Children Cope with a Parent's Terminal Illness

Cited by 114 publications

References 36 publications

Metastatic Cancer and Mothering: Being a Mother in the Face of a Contracted Future

Metastatic Cancer and Mothering: Being a Mother in the Face of a Contracted Future

Grief and its Complications in Individuals with Intellectual Disability

“She looked like an Alien”

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