Understanding How Bereaved Parents Cope With Their Grief to Inform the Services Provided to Them

Abstract

Our objective was to develop a rich description of how parents experience their grief in the first year after the death of their child, and how various bereavement follow-up and support services helped them during this time, with the aim of informing follow-up and support services offered to bereaved parents. Our findings situated parents' individual experiences of coping within the social and institutional contexts in which they grieved. In the first year after the death of their child, parents regulated their intense feelings of grief through loss-oriented, restoration-oriented, and/or meaning reconstruction strategies. Often, parents' relationships with others and many of the bereavement follow-up and support services helped them in this regard. This article also explores how the results may aid service providers in accompanying parents in a way that optimizes outcomes for these parents.

Maintaining the connection: experiences of parents and mothers who they have lost their son for cancer

“…However, it is important to note that for the parents the bond begins with the ritual of farewell, given the importance of experiencing the time of death as a natural and healthy reality. 10,11 While traditional authors insisted that the relatives should "forget" through detachment and redirect emotional energy on other links, contemporary researchers argue that the relatives are linked to the deceased to transform its symbolic connections. Other authors point out that, for parents, children remain immortal in the sense of inner representation, so they remain real in their social world through symbolization of biological and historical ties, feeling the presence of their children, listen to his voice, and feel in touch with them, thus influencing their quality of life.…”

“…From these findings, it is necessary to strengthen the development of mutual support groups and follow-up of the bereaved by a team of health interdisciplinary and specialized in supporting bereaved in each of the oncology units in the country. 11,16,19,27…”

Use of spiritual coping strategies by gender, race/ethnicity, and religion at 1 and 3 months after infant's/child's intensive care unit death

“…In that study (Stevenson et al., ), the 11 married mothers described their husbands as being supportive and identified differences in their coping strategies. Wives wanted to talk more about the loss and attended support groups more than their husbands.…”

“…One to five years after the child's death, Stevenson et al. () asked 15 mothers and 6 fathers (95% White) how they coped with their grief in the first year following their child's death. Parents recalled talking about their child and/or doing things that kept them occupied, active, and distracted, as helpful activities.…”

“…Loss of a child severely taxes parents’ ability to cope. Parental grief has been described as a traumatic experience that generates negative feelings, consumes energy, disrupts the parent's emotional and social world, and causes severe and even prolonged distress (Bergstraesser, Inglin, Hurnung, & Landolt, ; Stevenson et al., ). Some bereaved parents rely on their religious and/or spiritual beliefs to obtain comfort, create meaning from their loss, and help in the healing process to minimize or resolve their grief (Cowchock et al., ; Lichtenthal, Currier, Neimeyer, & Keese, ).…”