Children's Grief Research Articles

Children of the Condemned: Grieving the Loss of a Father to Death Row

This article explores the effects of a death sentence and execution on the children of the accused. Insight into the unique bereavement of this population is provided, while contributing to the literature on death and dying. The experience of losing a father to death row and eventual execution is compared to the wider population of children with incarcerated parents and it is determined that children of death row inmates contend with a much more complicated grief process, one that has gone largely unstudied. This article contains a brief discussion of disenfranchised grief and nonfinite loss, two theories that, we argue, shape the children's grief process. The results section of the article uses qualitative data gathered from 19 children to explore the role that nonfinite loss and disenfranchised grief share in the nature of their bereavement. Our discussion focuses on the impact of stigma and violence on the grieving process. Following a discussion of the unique challenges confronting the children of death row inmates is a discussion of the implications that their experience has for practice.

Children's grief dreams and the theory of spiritual intelligence.

Children's grief dreams and the theory of spiritual intelligence.

One family, two religions: child belief or child grief in Christian–Muslim families?

This article deals with the results and further consequences of my empirical investigation of Christian–Muslim families and their children in Germany. It gives an insight into the religious world of 4‐ to 12‐year‐old children in Christian–Muslim families through the analysis of evaluated interviews and drawings concerning religious practice and the image of God. Through the presentation of different aspects such as prayer, the image of God, gender issues, religious practice and affinity, the question of children’s own needs is discussed.

The Effectiveness of Bereavement Interventions With Children: A Meta-Analytic Review of Controlled Outcome Research

Grief therapies with children are becoming increasingly popular in the mental health community. Nonetheless, questions persist about how well these treatments actually help with children's adjustment to the death of a loved one. This study used meta-analytic techniques to evaluate the general effectiveness of bereavement interventions with children. A thorough quantitative review of the existing controlled outcome literature (n = 13) yielded a conclusion akin to earlier reviews of grief therapy with adults, namely that the child grief interventions do not appear to generate the positive outcomes of other professional psychotherapeutic interventions. However, studies that intervened in a time-sensitive manner and those that implemented specific selection criteria produced better outcomes than investigations that did not attend to these factors.

Phenomenology and Correlates of Complicated Grief in Children and Adolescents

To describe the phenomenology of complicated grief (CG) in parentally bereaved children and adolescents and to examine its correlates. This is a preliminary report from an ongoing 5-year, population-based, longitudinal study of the impact of parental loss on family members. Analyses of cross-sectional data at intake are presented. The sample consists of 129 children and adolescents of parents who died by suicide, accident, or sudden natural death. Their average age is 13.3 +/- 3.1 years (range 7-18 years). A modified version of the Inventory of Complicated Grief-Revised (ICG-R) was administered and its factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity were examined. CG was significantly related to functional impairment even after controlling for current depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. CG was also associated with other measures of psychopathology, including suicidal ideation. In this preliminary analysis, CG appears to be a clinically significant syndrome in children and adolescents. Longitudinal data will help to clarify the prognostic significance of CG as well as to examine the interrelationship of CG and other psychopathology over time.

Expert Shares Tips on Supporting Children's Grief

Expert Shares Tips on Supporting Children's Grief

Implications of Parental Suicide and Violent Death for Promotion of Resilience of Parentally-Bereaved Children

This article considers the implications of suicide and violent deaths (including suicide, homicide, and accidents) for the development of interventions for parentally bereaved children. Analyses of data from the Family Bereavement Program find minimal differences in children's mental health problems, grief or risk and protective factors based on cause of parental death. In addition, cause of death did not substantially affect the relations between risk and protective factors and bereaved children's outcomes. It is concluded that cause of death from violence or suicide is not a very useful indicator of bereaved children's need for or likelihood of benefiting from an intervention.

Treating Trauma and Traumatic Grief in Children and Adolescents

Treating Trauma and Traumatic Grief in Children and Adolescents

Trauma, Grief and Depression in Nairobi Children After the 1998 Bombing of the American Embassy

Despite the increasingly dangerous world where trauma and loss are common, relatively few studies have explored traumatic grief in children. The 1998 American Embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, provided an unfortunate opportunity to examine this topic. This report describes findings in 156 children who knew someone killed in the incident, assessed 8 to 14 months after the explosion. Bomb-related posttraumatic stress was associated with physical exposure, acute response, posttraumatic stress related to other negative life events, type of bomb-related loss, and subsequent loss. Grief was associated with bomb-related posttraumatic stress, posttraumatic stress related to other negative life events, and type of bomb-related loss. The study supports the developing literature on traumatic grief and the need for studies exploring the potentially unique aspects of this construct.

Prise en charge du deuil post-traumatique chez l'enfant suite à une catastrophe naturelle

Subjects facing traumatic grief during natural disasters have to deal with a double psychic event: trauma (they escaped from a horrible death and witnessed death of known or unknown persons) and massive and sudden loss. The authors first recall the concepts of trauma, grief, traumatic grief, post-traumatic grief, and also particularities of grief for children. They then report the beginning the psychotherapy of two children (sisters), after they had survived the tsunami of 2004 that had killed their father. In order to take care of children in such circumstances, clinicians have to consider the following aspects of psychological suffering: the irreversible loss of a parent and the traumatic event, and the way they interact.

The Grief Song-Writing Process with Bereaved Adolescents: An Integrated Grief Model and Music Therapy Protocol

ABSTRACT: This article describes the development and implementation of the Grief Song-Writing Process (GSWP) with bereaved adolescents. First, a thematic analysis was completed of 123 songs previously written by bereaved adolescents in individual music therapy sessions that expressed core concerns regarding the death of their loved one and how they were coping since the death. Second, existing grief models were compared with these song theme areas, and an integrated grief model was developed that includes five identified grief process areas of understanding, feeling, remembering, integrating, and growing. Third, a systematized seven-session group GSWP protocol was developed and implemented, during which adolescents created music and wrote original lyrics to songs that focused on each of the five grief process areas. Details of this protocol are shared, along with five original songs composed for and during the songwriting process. The death of a loved one can be a difficult and significant life-impacting event, presenting major challenges for adolescents. The grieving process interacts with core adolescent concerns of gaining mastery and control over their environment, having a sense of belonging, seeking fairness and justice, and maintaining their self-image (Fleming & Adolph, 1986). Moos (1995) describes how bereaved adolescents adapt through establishing the personal meaning of the loss, maintaining an emotional balance, sustaining interpersonal relationships, and preserving a satisfactory self-image. Balk and Corr (1996) articulate a cognitive approach to therapy, emphasizing the need for adolescents to develop a variety of coping skills, including dealing with the reality of the loss and learning how to respond to life changes as a result of the death. However, many adolescents have a strong need to belong and not seem different from peers that may cause them to hide outward signs or expressions of grieving (Corr & Corr, 1996). This may result in acting out behavior, running away, delinquency, promiscuity, excessive drug use, or depression (Raphael, 1983; Wass & Scott, 1978). Various models of grief have described stages, tasks, phases, processes, and dimensions of healthy grieving for children, adolescents, and adults who have experienced the death of a loved one. In the development of the current study, many of these models were reviewed by Dalton (2001) for common characteristics and features. Some theorists have described task-based models for a healthy grieving process. These tasks include understanding and accepting the reality of the death, working through and bearing the emotional pain of the loss, and adjusting and resuming life without their loved one (Fox, 1985; Furman, 1974; Worden, 2002). Baker, Sedney, and Gross (1992) also described psychological tasks of forming a new personal identity integrating the experience of the loss, investing in new relationships, and returning to normal life activities. Bowlby (1980) described four phases of mourning including a numbing and denial of the reality of the loss; yearning for the loved one; intense emotions including sadness, anger, despair and hopelessness; and a reorganization where new bonds with others are formed. Rando (1993) described the R process of complicated mourning, including recognizing the loss, reacting to the separation, recollecting and re-experiencing the deceased and the relationship, relinquishing the old attachments and old assumptive world (i.e., what was taken for granted when the deceased was still alive), readjusting to move adaptively into the new world without forgetting the old, and reinvesting in life activities. Wolfelt (1983) described dimensions of children's grief, including a lack of feelings, shock, denial, numbness, emptiness, sadness, guilt, fear, self-blame, acting out behavior, explosive emotions, disorganization and panic, the big man/ woman syndrome (i.e., the bereaved child taking on adult roles previously held by the deceased), physiological changes, regression, and reconciliation. …

Review of Helping Bereaved Children, Second Edition: A Handbook for Practitioners.

NANCY BOYD WEBB (Ed.) Helping Bereaved Children, Second Edition: A Handbook for Practitioners New York: Guilford Publications, 2004, 408 pages (ISBN 1-59385-164-2, US$25.00 Paperback) When health policy decision-makers understand the greater societal benefits of providing evidencebased bereavement support to children and adolescents, country will have coordinated, accessible, and comprehensive Loss Support programs for every member. Until then, we are fortunate to have this guide to educate us on how to best support most vulnerable members when someone loved dies. Although the title specifically targets practitioners, believe that the plain language and holistic approach would assist parents and other adults in supporting these children and teens. In section 1, the editor/author's thorough discussion of the elements of children's grief in the home, school, and community provides a clear theoretical framework for understanding almost any scenario that the reader seeks to know more about. Dr. Webb's approach embraces current thinking on the inadequate, confusing language of grief as well as the contradictions between adult and children's grief processes. She posits that children should not be encouraged to disengage from the deceased but to continue the bonds, thus aiding in developmental task mastery. The first section concludes with a rational for professional intervention with some bereaved children and A thoroughly explained assessment tool that includes family, social, religious, and cultural factors that influence the child's state of bereavement. The author convincingly argues that adult-focused literature on delayed, absent, inhibited or unresolved grief does not apply to children who have a need to hold on to the memories and the person who died. Yet it is important to notice when a child's grief is interfering with his/her healthy development. As a way to notice, Dr. Webb proposes the term, disabling grief so that our deliberate use of the term indicates that something is wrong. Part 2 begins with complicated grief case studies demonstrating the use of the assessment tools and describing sessions with the therapist after the loss of family, and emphasizing the importance of offering the child a choice in the type of intervention that she/he participates in. This approach argues against an all-too-common attitude that occurs in many fami lies today - the gatekeeper and/or paternalistic scenario where a parent may not allow his/her child to receive professional support or may impose on the child the type of support the child receives. The editor/author also acknowledges the intense grief when parents divorce and compares it to the grief following death. Part 2 continues with three contributing authors exploring other complicated scenarios - sibling grief, death, and violent death. Dr. Davies shares observations of many bereaved siblings, concluding that generally siblings report not being able to talk or learn about their grief as it occurred. It was often later in life when they had insights about what really happened. She offers four general sibling responses: I hurt inside. do not understand. do not belong. am not enough. When surviving siblings were not given opportunities to express their grief, they were left believing that, although they were hurting inside, they should be able to deal with it themselves because all those around them were, as evidenced by the thundering silence. Elder and Knowles use current language of and completed suicide when discussing the impact on a family, rather than the stigma-perpetuating committed suicide. They eloquently describe how the child either is forced to endure the label of being in the bad family or to go through life believing a false story about the cause of death only to find out the truth decades later. …

Parents feel sense of grief for children with diabetes

Families forced to ‘create new model of the world’ to deal with illness, study finds

Literature for Adults to Assist Them in Helping Bereaved Children

The assignment sounded simple enough: “Describe, analyze, and evaluate literature available for adults to help them in their efforts to assist bereaved children.” Plodding into it, however, proved daunting. A Google search yielded 143,000 matches for “bereaved children” and 283,000 for “grieving children.” Reviews of death-related catalogs and books available through Amazon.com unveiled a dizzying array of options. Clearly, boundaries would need to be set. Having been instructed to include only written publications and not videos, DVDs, or other media, this is the question I opted to address: What are the “Top 20” publications for a professional wanting to start a library of written resources directed at adults who help grieving children? In my search, I enlisted the input of over 200 professionals and para-professionals in the field, in person (at the 7th Annual Children's Grief Symposium in San Antonio, Texas; among my colleagues at The Dougy Center, with a collective 40 years of work with bereaved children), and by e-mail (to selected members of the Association for Death Education and Counseling, and a gathering of Women in Thanatology). I filtered through their recommendations, and landed on the 20 listed here. I also decided to focus on two reading populations: professionals and parents. In so doing, I asked myself the following questions: What kinds of publications ought a person in a professional helping role, whether a psychologist, aftercare provider, counselor, therapist, or educator, be minimally familiar with to better assist bereaved children? And, what resources might those professionals recommend to individuals who are parenting children grieving a loss through death? You will note that I have excluded publications solely geared to classroom teachers or the school environment, not because they aren't important or voluminous, but because that topic is a full article in itself, and outside the scope of my assignment. Another qualifier: with the exceptions of co-editors, I chose to limit an author to one selection in order to broaden the range of topics and contributors. Caveat emptor!

Counseling With Children in Contemporary Society

This article examines elements related to children's developmental understandings of death, ways to talk to children about death, a broad understanding of the nature of children's grief and bereavement, recognition of the common characteristics of grieving children, and useful interventions.The research related to the child grief process and the intrinsic value of therapeutic and educational supports in working with grieving children are discussed through case studies, the professional literature, and practical interventions that support the process of grief therapy for mental health counselors and the bereaved child.

Expressing Grief Through Storytelling

The authors describe the use of storytelling to assist children who have experienced the death of a family member or friend. The results support the theory that children are able to use narrative to express grief and loss and that artwork can aid in the expression of both experiences.

Facilitating Children's Grief

A program of education and support is essential for children and their parent or adult caregivers when the children have experienced the death of a significant person. Children need guidance on how to deal with their profound feelings of grief. The purpose of this article is to give school nurses the ability to help children face the strange new world that follows the death experience. The review of literature defines commonly used terms, describes the mourning process experienced by children, and offers school nurses basic information about grief. The article presents the critical elements necessary for planning and implementing a 6-week grief education and support program that offers children and their parent or adult caregivers permission to grieve and the tools with which to process grief.

Supporting the bereaved child: Teacher's perceptions and experiences in Greece

The purpose of this national survey was to explore the general perceptions of Greek teachers (n = 1792) about bereaved children, and investigate the experiences of those who had a student who grieved over the death of a relative (n = 590, 33%) and those who had a class which grieved over the death of a classmate (n = 215, 12%). Findings suggest that most educators are perceptive of children's grief responses and changes in academic performance and behaviour. They consider their role significant in supporting bereaved students, but feel inadequately prepared and request specialized knowledge and skills. Educators who had a student who grieved over the death of a relative expressed considerable difficulty in openly discussing the loss with their student, yet described changes in their own and in the peers' attitudes towards the bereaved student. While the death of a family member was likely to be perceived as a private affair, the death of a student was experienced as a community loss that disrupted school life, and educators were more likely to discuss and engage in collective activities that commemorated the death of the child.

Newsboy Funerals: Tales of Sorrow and Solidarity in Urban America

Most children in nineteenth-century America were buried as members of a family or a church, not a trade. Yet in cities across the country newsboys publicly laid to rest many of their fallen comrades. An ethnographic reading of these humble rituals, and a reconsideration of the often-sentimental literature and images in which they appear, enable us to see children's grief not solely as a product of personal loss or religious faith, but as expressions of class feeling. Studies of children and death usually focus on middle-class attitudes and domestic practices, but newsboy funerals can broaden our understanding of bereavement to working-class children in the public sphere and illuminate why poor youths feared burial in a potter's field more than death itself. Newsboys took up collections for flowers, caskets, and gravestones for each other; they drafted letters of sympathy and resolutions of condolence, and marched en masse in funeral trains. Some boys dispensed with clergy and conducted the last rites themselves. In so doing, they were not simply aping bourgeois standards of propriety and spirituality, but drawing on a host of cultural influences, both bourgeois and plebeian, religious and commercial, to develop their own masculine codes of affection and rituals of mourning.

Handling children's grief at the first anniversary

Handling children's grief at the first anniversary