This study examined patterns of making meaning among 155 parents whose children died from a variety of violent and non-violent causes. Findings indicated 53% of violent loss survivors could not make sense of their loss, as compared to 32% of non-violent loss survivors. Overall, there was overlap in sense-making strategies across different causes…

Following the death of a child, parents are turning to alternative means of communication to express their grief. In this instrumental case study, the authors explore how 1 woman, Amy Ambrusko, communicates her grief experience on her blog, emotionally negotiating loss and parental grief. Guided by M. S. Miles's (1984) parental grief model, the…

This article presents, in the form of a clinical illustration, a therapeutic group of bereaved mothers with special reference to their dreams about their deceased children. The article presents descriptions of the emotions of these mothers and countertransference feelings, a topic that, to our knowledge, has not been frequently studied. The group…

Few studies have distinguished similarities and differences between continuing bonds as they appear in various bereaved populations, particularly parent versus sibling cohorts following a child's death. This mixed-method study compared how parents and siblings experienced continuing bonds in 40 families who lost a child to cancer. Thirty-six…

The authors investigated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in Japanese bereaved family members using a questionnaire. Participants were bereaved as a result of suicide and homicide (n = 51 and 49, respectively), with natural death (n = 56) as a control; and their relationships to the deceased were parent-child (n = 79), conjugal (n =…

With survey data collected primarily from peer support group participants, the authors compared stigmatization responses of 462 parents losing children to suicide with 54 other traumatic death survivors and 24 child natural death survivors. Parents who encountered harmful responses and strained relations with family members and non-kin reported…

A longitudinal study was conducted among bereaved parents to examine the relationship between the circumstances surrounding the death of their child and psychological adjustment. Two hundred nineteen couples participated at 6, 13, and 20 months post-loss. Examination was made of two categories of factors: those that were determined by the…

This study evaluated the construct of childhood traumatic grief (CTG) and its correlates through a multi-site assessment of 132 bereaved children and adolescents. Youth completed a new measure of the characteristics, attributions, and reactions to exposure to death (CARED), as well as measures of CTG, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD),…

The death of a child is an incomprehensible and devastating loss. Grief for parents is lifelong, becoming the connection between parent and child. To extend and deepen current understanding of parental grief, a new survey instrument was developed, combining quantitative and qualitative measures. The qualitative findings from this combined…

An abundance of literature on caregivers of individuals with dementia has been written since the mid-1980s. However, most of this literature focused on the experience of stress, burden, and depression in caregivers, thus excluding the grief experience that also accompanies the caregiving experience. The purpose of this multimethod study is to…

In order to establish effective suicide preventive programs, it is important to know the etiologic factors and causal relationships between suicide and behavior. Coroner data was analyzed for the 468 suicides that occurred in Indianapolis, Indiana during 1998-2001. The age-adjusted suicide rate was 14.08 per 100,000. Almost one-half of the victims…