Suicide bereavement support groups are a valuable source of help for people coping with a suicide and it is important to understand how they are beneficial, as well as ways in which they may be unhelpful or even detrimental. A constructivist grounded theory approach was implemented and17 family members bereaved by suicide were interviewed, along with seven participants in a focus group. The findings highlighted the difficulties for participants to adjust to the suicide, which motivated them to meet others in a peer suicide bereavement group who had shared a similar experience. This helped them to normalise their grief experiences and share ways of coping with the death. Some participants encountered practical challenges of accessing groups, found other ways of coping or described their needs as unmet. It is recommended that health services proactively provide bereaved families with timely and ongoing information on support available, including peer support groups, to minimise negative health outcomes.
Bereavement can be a distressing experience and the importance of bereavement support has been recognised in policy and practice for many years. This rapid evidence assessment was undertaken to evaluate the provision and effectiveness of bereavement support in the United Kingdom (UK) and to identify gaps in service provision and areas of need with regard to bereavement services. The main finding of the review was that the provision of bereavement support is extremely varied and there is no conclusive evidence for its effectiveness. There is widespread recognition of the potentially negative impact of bereavement on people, and a plethora of recommendations focused on raising awareness and ameliorating these effects have been made. However, the evidence for how best to support people experiencing bereavement is limited and contested.
The 1980s and 1990s saw the remaking of the meaning of perinatal death in Canadian hospitals from that of the silencing to the recognition and attention to women's grief (Davidson, 2007). By the mid-twentieth century both birth and death were increasingly removed from the home and placed in healthcare and funeral facilities (Aries, 1981; Walter, 1994). Beginning in the 1950s when hospital birth had become the general social norm, death around the time of birth became a new institutional concern. Using a symbolic interactionist approach, I document how this new standard of care emerged as perinatal bereavement protocols in the Canadian context. Situating the emergence in its historical context, it is examined here through the time-relevant literature - that is, the literature that influenced the changes from the 1960s through the early 2000s. Then, examined through more recent literature, I illustrate how the protocols continue to work for one extended family after their experience of stillbirth in 2012.
Compassionate initiatives to support the bereaved increasingly come from a diverse range of different resources within our local and national communities. There has been a growing recognition by researchers of the significance of the wide variety of community support available, identifying and describing some of the characteristics and benefits of these different resources. As we consider our local community, and how best we serve the needs of the bereaved, these studies can give us inspiration and guidance as we create networks of provision.
2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of the 1999 landmark publication Ambiguous loss: learning to live with unresolved grief by Emeritus Professor Pauline Boss. The book, and its exploration of uncertainty, has invited ambiguous loss into the grief counselling space, as a way to provide specialised care for families and friends of missing people. This scoping review aims to examine the breadth of literature regarding counselling interventions from the previous work of Boss to the present day, as a way to enhance quality of life for people left behind when someone is missing. The literature highlights the experience of trauma relating to complicated mourning, as well as opportunities for post-traumatic growth while people wait for news of their loved ones. The results of the review, and suggestions for future research and therapeutic interventions, demonstrate that families of missing people need specialised support when they access grief counselling. The review demonstrates how counsellors can extend their knowledge of grief interventions and learn to tolerate uncertainty themselves in order to provide support to this important group of individuals post-loss and potentially prior to a confirmed bereavement.
The effects of bereavement are unique and support must be individually tailored. The role of the general practitioner (GP) in paediatric cancer palliative care is wide-ranging and challenging, yet little is known about offered bereavement support in this context. We carried out an in-depth secondary analysis of text relating to bereavement support from a semi-structured interview study exploring GPs' and parents' experiences. Findings highlight the importance of early GP-initiated face-to-face contact with parents, exploring opportunities for innovative practice and maintaining close collaboration with hospital-based teams. A co-ordinated, equitable and sustainable approach to bereavement support may help address identified GP knowledge deficits and time-pressures.
Each year, thousands of British schoolchildren experience the loss of a loved one. In this trying time, it is vital that school staff have a good understanding of how to offer support. Sadly, many school staff struggle with how to provide support and in what form. Based on experiences from Scandinavia, in this article we provide guidelines and practical advice for the forms of support which we consider beneficial. In cases of anticipated losses, the school can do its utmost to collaborate with the home and student in order to ensure efficient communication and good student care. Following a loss, the school should work to provide a caring climate that makes it easier to return to class. We recommend making most decisions in collaboration with the bereaved children in order to ensure they receive support they themselves find beneficial.
Our objective was to explore parents' experiences of stillbirth using a patient-led qualitative approach, in the Canadian context. Parents who had experienced stillbirth in the previous five years were recruited through posters and snowball sampling. We conducted a co-design focus group to set the direction of our research, narrative interviews, and a reflect focus group to engage parents in finalizing the analysis and findings. Data was analysed iteratively using a participatory approach with grounded theory principles. Our findings highlight that stillbirth is a story of death, but it is also a story of life. Parents (n=11) require the space to experience both the birth and death elements of the story; yet, one or both elements are often silenced. Stillbirth, still life was the core concept that emerged from parents' stories of their stillborn babies. Parents' narratives are driven by the need to honour their babies' lives. They are learning to be unsilenced.
The loss of a child is one of the most profoundly stressful events an adult can experience, but perinatal hospice may be an important resource for the family’s wellbeing. The aim of this study was to understand how a group of American and Italian parents of infants affected by life-limiting or terminal conditions and treated with personalised comfort measures represents, with a metaphorical statement, the experience of perinatal hospice care. Thirty five questionnaires were collected and included 13 parents from Italy and 22 from the US. Parents represent their experience as positive and rich with lovely family moments and, although it is also a hard path, they consider it as an important gift. Other metaphors elected were related to spirituality and transcendence, underlying the need of parents to express and share their spiritual values and beliefs. Finally, parents also perceived an overall support from care providers and felt as if they were part of the same family.
Abstract Working with young children, Donald Winnicott (1951) identified transitional objects as items which were both created and discovered by an infant for comfort, and to support the developmental necessity of separating from their primary caregiver. In adulthood, the keeping and holding of a physical object, for example a piece of jewellery owned by a loved one who has died, is frequently seen as supportive for bereaved people but is rarely named or conceptualised as a transitional object. Taking an object relations perspective, the aim of this review will be to consider research and literature within bereavement theory and practice in order to suggest how transitional objects can be conceptualised in grief work across all life stages. Examples from research and the authors own therapeutic practice will be shared in order to suggest ways in which the use of transitional objects can support therapeutic practice with bereaved people.
To minimise the adverse outcomes of prolonged complex bereavement, health professionals need effective risk screening tools to identify those at risk. However, existing tools can be challenging to implement in the clinical setting. This qualitative study aimed to explore clinicians’ perspectives and experiences of using the Bereavement Risk Index (BRI) screening tool, including identifying barriers and enablers regarding its use and what they perceived as important domains in bereavement risk screening. Data was collected through semi-structured group and individual interviews and deductively analysed using the Theoretical Domains Framework. Eleven participants employed in one regional palliative care service were interviewed. The results revealed three key implications: 1) a risk screening tool is highly beneficial, however contextual factors can limit its implementation; 2) clinician confidence in the tool and perception of the tool’s comprehensiveness are significant factors in its use; 3) feedback is needed as to whether clinicians’ assessment of bereavement risk remains accurate and valid in the longer term.
Colin Murray Parkes with Cruse patron Her Majesty the Queen at St James Palace, celebrating Cruse’s 60th anniversary I was honoured to be asked to write something at this time, as Colin steps down ...
This study aimed to explore the current clinical psychology approach in supporting bereaved adults with intellectual disability (ID). As the literature in this area is limited, report of real clinical practice may enhance our understanding of the usual role of clinical psychologists, and any factors which may shape this. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six clinical psychologists and the resulting data analysed thematically. Findings identified the approach of participants when supporting bereaved adults with ID, as well as some factors affecting this, such as the impact of grief across support systems and the complexity of best practice in the absence of clear guidance. This absence of an evidence base to guide the clinical response in supporting bereaved adults with ID was identified as a source of professional concern for participants. Further guidance and resources, derived from high-quality research, are urgently required in order to address this issue.
It’s no surprise that this novel is a Costa children’s and Irish book award winner.Maggie Yates is shut down, unable to allow herself to feel the pain about the death of her best friend. Maggie’s h...
After the death of a child, bereaved fathers may experience tremendous loss. However, the experiences of bereaved fathers after the death of a child have rarely been studied within the academic literature. This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences of bereaved fathers after their loss. The sample consisted of 12 Malaysian bereaved fathers who lost their child due to accidents (n=11) and homicide (n=1). The findings reported themes which were memories that never end, challenges post-loss, and life after the loss. Subthemes emerged from the data which addressed health issues, stigma, challenges to understand spouses, feelings of emptiness and blaming, growth postloss, and ongoing relationships. Even though Malay people accept the concept of fate is decided by God, they still have difficulty reconciling their emotions and their beliefs where bereavement is due is to traumatic death.
In the months following my mother’s death I searched for outlets for my grief. There were factual obituaries to be written, but I wanted to write something at a deeper level, as a way of trying to ...
Does restricting the ceremonial/ritual arrangements around a cremation to a minimum have a negative association with grief over time? This question has increasingly concerned professionals in the funeral industry as well as those in healthcare capacities working with bereaved persons. We examined the relationship between cremation arrangements and levels of grief. Bereaved people in the UK completed questionnaires 2 to 5 months post-loss and a year later (N=233 with complete data). Complexity of the cremation service was not significantly related to grief; neither was satisfaction with arrangements (which was typically high). Results suggested that it makes no difference to grief whether a more minimalistic or elaborate funeral ceremony is chosen under conditions where the bereaved feel free to make choices that best suit their situation. We concluded that the funeral industry seems to be offering bereaved people an appropriate range of cremation arrangement choices to meet their needs. Important limits to generalizability are discussed. That funeral services serve multiple functions for bereaved persons is emphasized.
This article details the development of a live design research project working with people who are bereaved, people who are living with dementia and people who are approaching end of life. The project aims to support people to continue bonds with others in anticipation of and following death. It centres on the idea of ongoingness and using art, design and digital technologies in gentle, personally meaningful ways.
Toni Bewley describes how she coped after her 23-year-old daughter Toni’s death. Toni jnr had many complex health needs requiring 24-hour care at home. In this article her mother describes the prof...
I doubt my father remembers breaking the news to me, with all the tact of a rhinoceros crapping on a drum, that everybody dies. I was five, and I’m pretty sure I brought it up. As the first shards ...
