Grief and Trauma in Children After the Death of a Sibling

Abstract

Parent loss is understood as a fundamental loss to a child, but less is known about the consequences of a sibling's death. The present study explored self-reported grief and trauma among 26 sibling-bereaved children to help inform effective support interventions. Grief and trauma scores were highly correlated in our sample, and there were no definitive differences based upon type of loss. The main limitation was a small sample, but our results provide ecologically valid information rather than data from children recruited for research purposes. Implications for continued data collection and publication from naturalistic settings and meta-analytic recommendations are discussed.