The relative importance of avoidance and restoration-oriented stressors for grief and depression in bereaved parents

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious research has identified a number of individual risk factors for parental bereavement including the sex of the parent, the sex of the child, avoidance-focussed coping style and time since death. These factors emerged from research where variables were tested univariately and their relative importance is currently unknown. The current research therefore aims to investigate which risk factors are important, multivariately, for the outcomes of grief and depression in parents following the death of their child. MethodPsychosocial measures were completed by 106 bereaved parents four years post-loss recruited from death records in Scotland. The cause of the child's death included long term illness and stillbirths as well as sudden and violent deaths. ResultsIn multivariate regression analyses, depression was predicted by avoidance-focussed coping and the number of restoration-oriented stressors. Grief was predicted by avoidance, restoration stressors and level of continuing bonds. ConclusionThe present study adds to the knowledge about the phenomenon of parental bereavement with participants recruited directly from death records rather than through

Adverse outcomes in bereaved mothers: The importance of household income and education

“…age of bereaved person, age of child at time of death, suddenness of the death) were not found to be the most significant of the factors tested in the present study. This finding was supported in other research which analyzed the multivariate importance of risk factors in parental bereavement ( Harper et al, 2014a , Harper et al, 2014b ) suggesting that the experience of parental bereavement may have measurably different elements of risk compared to losses such as conjugal or parental. Multivariate testing of risk factors is rare in parental bereavement research, and previous studies have been limited by smaller sample sizes and relatively heterogeneous demographics (for instance, white, middle-income families with moderate to high levels of education).…”

Latent classes of resilience and psychological response among only‐child loss parents in China

“…The income <1,000 (minimum subsistence in Changsha), no endowment insurance, and National Rural Cooperative Medical Insurance (low reimbursement ratio type of medical insurance) were risk factors for a low resilience level. Socioeconomic factors could influence the resilient procedures and mental health after trauma (Harper et al, ; Lowe, Sampson, Gruebner, & Galea, ), and the OCL parents also claimed deep worry and powerlessness in economy, pension, and healthcare (Xu, ). Those aspects were the basis of daily life and would get changed due to a child's death.…”

“…, ). Many bereaved parents experienced severe postbereavement depressive moods (Harper, O'Connor, & O'Carroll, ), and approximately 71.9% of OCL families claimed that the main difficulty was how to cope with the long periods of sadness. In addition, 76.9% of the OCL parents were suffering from depression to an extent (Chen, ; Zhang, ).…”

Impact of fetal or child loss on parents’ perceptions of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis for autosomal recessive conditions

“…While we initially conducted the study to explore parents' perceptions of the use of NIPD, it became clear that their experiences had a profound impact on perceptions of themselves and themselves as reproductive beings. Although there is much literature available on the grief that accompanies the diagnosis of a child with a life-limiting condition ( (Harper, O'Connor et al 2014), an important contribution of this study was its capacity to report the experiences of parents who were prone to changes in their self-identity as a consequence of their own experience. This centred around their perception of the likelihood of them having a child with serious health problems.…”