Grief processes in the COVID-19 pandemic: narrative review

Abstract

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic for Covid-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus. Several sanitary measures had to be adopted to prevent the contagion and spread of the virus, in addition to countless changes and adaptations in daily life, which generated several symbolic losses and also loss of human life, especially in Brazil. Thus, the present study seeks to analyze scientific production on the issue relating to grief and the pandemic, in order to investigate the main aspects and developments of grief, as well as possible questions and attempted answers and suggested solutions. To this end, the narrative review method was used. The electronic databases Portal de Periódicos of CAPES, Scielo and Pepsic were consulted, using the keywords “mourning”; pandemic"; “psychology” in the period from 2020 to 2022. After reading the articles found in the databases, 24 articles published in Brazil were selected, which, after qualitative assessment, resulted in the elaboration of four thematic categories, namely: “Loss and grief in the context of pandemic : care strategies”; “Mourning as a political event and collective experience”; “Psychology practices during the pandemic: adaptations and possibilities” and “Complicating elements in the grieving processes”. Analyzing the scientific production on grief during the Covid-19 pandemic allowed us to take a look at how some processes were experienced in this unique and, in many ways, challenging historical moment. Science played a crucial role in responding to urgent social, psychological, health demands, among others, that emerged daily. The scientific production on grief and pandemic between the years 2020 and 2022 presented several contributions to give us a glimpse into strategies for caring for psychological suffering, about the possibilities of exercising psychology in the face of a new reality, especially in a remote environment, and about some elements complications in the grieving process. Furthermore, a very important contribution of the studies was the analysis that mourning in the Covid-19 pandemic was an event crossed by political, social, cultural and economic issues, and was also a collective experience.