Grief Support Groups Research Articles

Posttraumatic growth among participating and non-participating organ donor families in grief support groups

This article aimed to assess posttraumatic growth among participating and nonparticipating families of organ donors in grief support groups. The program, in the form of both face-to-face and WhatsApp groups, is unique in that it extends over many years without limitation for a predefined period, is open to both immediate and extended family members, and is conducted according to predetermined topics. A questionnaire was completed by 84 participants and 115 non-participant family members. Most participants had attended for between 1 and 5 years (57.2%), although 33.3% had participated for >5 years, including 16.7% who participated for >10 years. All measures of posttraumatic growth were significantly higher in group participants (3.40 [0.75] vs. 3.15 [0.75], p = .010) than non-participants. The often-prolonged participation in the groups suggests there may be an important need for ongoing contact with and support for these families even many years after the loss.

225.3: Understanding deceased donor families' challenges with and tools for managing grief post-organ donation: a qualitative exploration of donor family grief support groups.

225.3: Understanding deceased donor families' challenges with and tools for managing grief post-organ donation: a qualitative exploration of donor family grief support groups.

Teaching Forensic Social Work: Innovative Education through Service-Learning

The high impact, experiential education of service-learning was utilized in a Forensic Social Work class to enhance students’ social work skills. Students and faculty, along with another community partner provided animal-assisted grief support groups to individuals who were incarcerated. Two support groups were provided to individuals who suffered a recent or unresolved loss, one with women and one with men. Social work skills of empathy, professional boundaries, social justice, group facilitation, and applying theory to practice were greatly enhanced through this service-learning, high impact practice. The added value of therapy dogs in enhancing the therapeutic process was also noted.

137 Community Grand Rounds (CGR): A Community and University Partnership on Chicagos South Side Addressing Social Determinants of Health through Health Education

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: University faculty partner with Community Consultants (CC) to: 1) identify health concerns of Chicagos South Side residents, 2) provide information regarding resources that address community health concerns, and 3) disseminate the model across the Institute for Translational Medicines (ITM) institutional partners. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: CCs met twice monthly with University faculty and staff to identify CGR topics, delivery format, and audience development strategies. Faculty from the University of Chicago and community experts presented on identified health topics. Traditionally held in a community setting, CGR moved to a virtual format due to the pandemic. Recent topics covered included issues around the impact of COVID-19 on African American and LatinX communities and vaccine hesitancy. Audience members were surveyed at the end of each session and provides information on the quality and impact of the content. Twice during the season, partners debriefed on the effectiveness of the partnership and program. A plan was developed to deploy CGR across the ITM partners. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Since 2010, there have been 63 CGRs, and over 5370 attendees. To date, 95% of audience members report that the content of CGR is of value and would recommend it to others. Audience members surveyed report knowledge gains about the topics presented, satisfaction with venues and speakers, and support the continuation of the series. Despite having to move to a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, audience members continue to attend CGR and rate the program as valuable and something that they would recommend to others. CCs report commitment to the partnership and CGR. CGR served as a connector for audience members to COVID-19 resources such as grief support groups and financial assistance. Loyola University, an ITM partner, implemented the CGR model, with more planning to do the same. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: CGR is effective at providing health information in a community setting. CGRs success is due to the commitment of its partners and its ability to respond to community needs. During the pandemic, attendance at each virtual CGR remained steady and audience feedback remained positive. CGR continues to serve as a connector to valuable resources.

Bereavement behind bars: Grief support groups with and without therapy dogs for incarcerated females

Grief is a universal experience; however not everyone experiences grief and loss in the same way. People who are incarcerated are often informed of losses via phone, are unable to attend funeral services or participate in supportive rituals, and can have difficulty expressing feelings in a place where showing emotion can be dangerous. Being unable to obtain support and process grief and loss may contribute to impaired functioning. In this study of bereavement support for women in prison, incarcerated women with recent or unresolved losses (n=32) were randomly assigned to grief support groups with therapy dogs (animal-assisted, AA) or without therapy dogs (non-AA). Pre- and post-test measures of bereavement symptoms and prolonged grief disorder (PGD) were obtained. This study shows that AA groups had more significant decreases in symptoms, lower rates of post-group diagnostic criteria for PGD and higher rates of perceived support/benefit from the groups.

Extending our reach: telehealth delivered grief support groups for rural hospice

ABSTRACT The purpose of this pilot project was to develop, implement, and evaluate a distance-technology delivered grief support group program for grieving persons in underserved rural/frontier communities in Utah. This project was a collaboration between an established university-based grief support program, the (blinded) Telehealth Network and with one primary nonprofit hospice (blinded) and two secondary nonprofit hospice agencies (blinded) serving underserved/rural-frontier communities. We evaluated program feasibility (recruitment, retention, acceptability, tolerability, clinician trainability, and stakeholder satisfaction) and participant grief outcomes. Distance delivered grief groups compared favorably to face-to-face groups and met an unmet need for bereaved hospice families.

Mystery of Mourning

Mystery of Mourning Jane Rosenberg LaForge (bio) Grievance Christine Bell Lake Union Publishing https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/lake-union-publishing.html 284 Pages; Print, $8.48 The best mystery writers center their whodunits not solely on an isolated act of murder or mayhem, but a larger conundrum that is unlikely to be neatly resolved by the novel's end. For Edgar Allan Poe, that mystery is the human mind, the ideas and deeds it is capable of. For Chester Himes and Walter Mosley, the mystery is race, its meaning and impact. For G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, the mystery is the meaning and nature of Christian faith. For Raymond Chandler and other noir writers, the mystery is justice, and whether the truly guilty will ever get their proper measure of it. This rule also applies to an offshoot of the mystery genre, the thriller. Try to imagine a John LeCarré thriller without a dilemma over loyalty, who deserves it and who actually gets it, in a world of double agents, career civil servants, and poll-driven politicians. His spies would be far less sympathetic and intriguing without their principles. For Christine Bell, in her latest novel, Grievance, the mystery is mourning, how should we grieve a loved one in a society where the dead can seemingly live on, thanks to advances in technology. Her protagonist is the widow of an opera singer and mother of two boys who is confronted by signs and signals that someone is unwilling to let her husband go quietly, if that person is prepared to let him go at all. Bell's observations about the day-to-day work of grieving, of keeping up with work, family, and friends when there seems to be no reason to, are what give her novel a soul. They also provide Bell with an opportunity to display her talent with the language of grief. But in hewing so closely to the requirements of the mystery-thriller genre, Bell's tale rubs up against the comical. This could not have been her intent, with the intricate plotting and sympathetic characterizations that support the book's climax. Bell takes us through the various stages, or the stasis, of grieving in the mind of Lily Declan. She is neither a spy nor a detective, though the genre's conventions do not demand that she be either. Often times, the person who cuts the Gordian knot of intrigue and scandal is an outsider, able to see what the jaded, or deluded law enforcement officials cannot. But Lily does live in a world of portent; she does not see clues, but hints that some presence of her dead husband is still at work in her life. Des, or Desmond—the name will prove significant later—died of cancer almost a year before the story opens. Yet Lily can't help but look for his hand in her life, either through the "mountain lore" of her Tennessee family or the songs that play on the car radio Des long ago programmed. Lily's nemesis eventually complains that Lily "wear[s] [her] widowhood like a crown," but Lily is at a loss for how to grieve. Even the skin condition of a woman helping to run Lily's grief support group, the Circle of Compassion, has meaning, even if Lily can't quite grasp what it is. "The best–kept secret of widowdom," Lily is told by a member of the support group, is that "the second year is worse than the first." This is the last thing Lily needs to hear, given all the auguries that haunt her. Into this very private setting enters a woman who claims to be an old flame of the dead man, though none of Des's friends, family, or associates can remember her. Using an obvious alias, she writes demanding and pitiable condolence letters to Lily and may be behind some disturbing and intimate gifts and incidents that frame the novel's central question: "Who owns the dead? Who owns their memory?" With the Internet and social media, the dead do not stay gone for long. Their images appear on Facebook unbidden. Lily suspects something nefarious as...

Group leaders’ experiences in heterogenous grief support groups

ABSTRACTGroup processes in social work are complex. In this article, the authors examine how Norwegian leaders experience these processes during their grief support group work. The authors take a qualitative approach, specifically semistructured interviews. Seven group leaders participated. Using qualitative content analysis, the authors found new and supporting information as presented in two inter-related themes: (1) Achieving cohesion is a challenging balance and (2) Facilitating the group activity is linked to group leaders’ engagement and competence. The authors suggest that group work is enhanced by well-qualified leaders paying attention and understanding toward the ongoing group processes, homogenous groups, prescreening, individual timing, and group cohesion.

Honoring grief, honoring ourselves: Mindfulness-based stress reduction education for grief group clinician-facilitators

ABSTRACTWe conducted a nine-session Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) educational program for clinician-facilitators who conduct grief support groups, and evaluated the impact of MBSR education on the self-efficacy of facilitators. Fifteen grief support group clinician-facilitators were assessed on 13 dimensions of self-efficacy. Using a mixed methods approach, we evaluated survey responses and short-answer narratives. Grief group facilitators, even those with prior mindfulness knowledge and practice, made substantial gains in self-efficacy in both professional and personal practice.

Who am I now? Experiences of widowed baby boomers attending grief support groups

AbstractThis qualitative study used a symbolic interactionist approach to explore experiences of widowed baby boomers in the mid-west United States, who attend/ed grief support groups. Results from 38 personal interviews revealed three themes: (a) the importance of a support group as a safe haven coupled with the value of sharing a similar loss; (b) challenges related to group support; and (c) fractured individual and social selves. The evidence supports the idea that grief groups are effective in aiding the widowed in bereavement but also highlights a need to adjust the structure of group programs (specific to spousal loss). Recommendations are given for providers to consider addressing restoration-oriented stress as the group progresses (in lieu of a sole emphasis on loss-oriented tension). The new structure has the potential to recognise a fractured self in widowhood to meet the needs of, provide hope for, and empower widowed survivors in a 21st century landscape.

“Please Know That You Are Not Alone with Your Pain”: Responses to Newcomer Posts in an Online Grief Support Forum

In an effort to better understand how the Internet can provide support to bereaved individuals, this discourse analysis study examined the responses to 107 initial posts in an online grief support group to understand how newcomers’ bids for group membership were taken up by current members. Discursive features included validation and empathy through second stories, constructing grief through descriptions, and accepting bids for membership through advice giving and invitations to return to the group. These features illustrate how grief and being a griever are constructed in an online context and how they deviate from the “normal” grief expectations in the offline world.

OA13 Developing sustainable community partnerships to provide ongoing bereavement support.

This project was developed within an urban home-based palliative care service. It commenced in response to the recognition that acutely grieving people needed long term, broad-based community support, and the need for death education in the community. It was hoped that bereavement support groups could be relocated from a clinical environment to the community, so that bereaved people could access support in their neighbourhoods, develop supportive local connexions and be introduced to a variety of resources. This would result in developing community partnerships, provide death education, assist in normalising death, dying and grief and in redressing the 'death taboo' in society. Once the concept was approved by the community palliative care service, local community centres were identified, connexions made and discussions held regarding building partnerships to provide bereavement support. Two community centres responded enthusiastically and partnerships have slowly developed. After 2 years, feedback from bereaved carers has consistently endorsed the move to community centres. Staff at one centre have now offered administrative support, requested 'open' grief support groups and grief education sessions. Staff from the other centre have requested a joint memorial service and training in loss and grief for staff. Developing sustainable community partnerships takes time and has required Significant evolutional learning. In particular, it must not become dependent on the specific personnel driving the project and there is a need to develop further protocols and 'embed' the practice. This is an organic process which will continue to grow in response to further development of the partnership.

Parental Grief Expression in Online Cancer Support Groups

Few studies exist on the benefits of online grief support for bereaved parents. We sought to learn from parents who lost a child to a brain or spinal cord tumor who participated in an online grief-support group. Eighteen bereaved parents and two professional facilitators participated in 20 monthly online groups, with chat room discussions analyzed for themes. Parents completed a 10-item survey evaluating reasons for participation and the group's effectiveness regarding coping following loss. Examples of chat room topics included the grief process or adjustment, negative social interactions, milestones or holidays, and sibling grief. Seventy-eight percent of eligible parents completed the survey. They endorsed online groups as effective for connecting with other bereaved parents and offering grief support, among other positive outcomes. Parents used online groups for a variety of reasons, including convenience, anonymity, and lack of local support. Parents' responses suggest that online support groups can be a convenient or effective grief-coping strategy for parents bereaved by cancer.

Online Grief Support Groups: Facilitators' Attitudes

Although bereaved individuals report positive experiences from participating in online support groups, little is known from a facilitator perspective. Using a web-based survey, data was collected from a national sample of grief facilitators (N = 64). Respondents reported more favorable attitudes toward in-person groups over online and indicated a low likelihood of facilitating an online group in the next year. However, 62% of the sample (n = 37) reported willingness to refer to online groups. This attitude may reflect facilitator acknowledgment of the need to increase the presence and availability of grief services; a need that bereaved individuals' express, as shown in previous research.

Comprehensive Wellbeing and Variables Linked to Religiosity in Mothers with Children Who Died

Amongst mourning generating events, death of children is unique, highlighting its impact on female parents (mothers). A group of 22 mothers with children who died and who were linked to religious practices and secular grief support groups was assessed by means of a questionnaire ad hoc (demographic and religious) and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT-Sp). Our results showed that Religiosity appears to play a modulatory role against the adverse effects impacting wellbeing generated by the death of a child. It is deemed necessary to pursue this line of research in order to analyse different variables associated with this phenomenon.

Positive and Negative Experiences from Grief Group Participation: A Qualitative Study

This article presents qualitative interview data from the research project "Grief Support Groups in Norway" (2009-2011). The aim of this part of the study was to investigate grief group participant's experiences, benefits, and satisfaction with the grief group. Positive aspects were to meet with peers, share thoughts and feelings, normalization, exchange advice and information, and share hope. On the negative side were unfulfilled needs or expectations, additional personal stress, and unsatisfactory structure, organization, and leadership. Importantly, lack of screening caused bereaved with complicated grief to participate in groups that were non-therapeutic, leaving them with insufficient help. Also, group leaders were not always considered knowledgeable of group processes and impacts of different organizational and structural factors on groups. Conclusively, participants' needs and expectations should be considered when planning and organizing groups, in order to conduct helpful groups and increase the experience of a positive outcome.

“I was Just Trying to Stick it Out Until I Realized that I Couldn'T”: A Phenomenological Investigation of Support Seeking among Older Adults with Complicated Grief

Complicated Grief (CG) is a prolonged, impairing mental health condition affecting about 7% of the bereaved. CG may be especially prevalent in older adults. Though evidence-based treatments for CG have been developed, little is known about support-seeking in older adults with CG. This study used the descriptive phenomenological approach to explore the CG support-seeking process. In-depth interviews were conducted with 8 CG-positive older adults who had completed participation in a randomized clinical trial of CG treatment. Five primary themes arose: observing that grief was causing a great deal of distress and impairment; grief not meeting expectations of what grief "should be"; an important influence of social relationships on support-seeking; lack of effectiveness of grief support groups and/or care from mental health professionals prior to study enrollment; and strong reactions to the label of CG. Themes may hep inform efforts to engage older adults with CG in effective care.

Grief support groups in second life.

Online grief support groups serve as an avenue of support for the bereaved. In the past, facilitators have criticized the ability to provide group participants with a sense of therapeutic support, given the lack of face-to-face interaction in online groups. However, with the growing technological advances, 3-D virtual worlds, such as Second Life, may increase a participant's sense of presence and improve their group experience. A web-based survey was utilized to explore facilitator attitudes towards grief support groups in Second Life.

Grieving Online: Newcomers’ Constructions of Grief in an Online Support Group

Research into peer conversations in online grief support groups remains scarce. The authors used discourse analysis to examine 107 initial posts to one such group to examine how newcomers constructed their initial posts to display their eligibility for membership. The authors identified three discursive features: formulating unusual stories of loss, describing uncontrollable emotional and physical states, and engaging in “troubles telling.” These discursive patterns illustrate how grief is constructed in ways that may simultaneously conform to and resist norms around grief that exist offline. Implications for practitioners include the need to support individuals through validation of their “nonnormal” grief.

Participants' Recommendations for the Ideal Grief Group: A Qualitative Study

Based on the results from the qualitative part of the study "Grief Groups in Norway" conducted in 2009-2011, this article focuses on grief group participants' recommendations for good or ideal grief groups. Participants have insightful observations about grief groups and how they can be improved, and taking their point of view seriously is one important way of ensuring that users of such group get an optimal experience from joining such groups. Using their experiences to adjust the structure and function of the groups, one can allow for practical solutions for organizations that have difficulties starting up grief support groups, for example, in areas where the population density is low. A major finding in this study was that grief group participants stressed the importance of thorough information before and at the start of grief groups. This concerned information about the aim, structure, organization, and possible effects and limitations of group participation.