Background: Previous clinical and theoretical work supports the idea that parental attachment style and complicated grief affect young persons' mental health, but empirical research investigating their impact on young person's adjustment to bereavement is lacking. Objective: This study investigated the impact of parental attachment style and…

Background: Due to the progressive deterioration of motor, cognitive, and psychological function, individuals with Huntington's disease (HD) rely heavily on family caregivers, including children in the home. This "young carer" role can result in responsibilities that are inappropriate for the child's age and abilities. Also referred to…

While grief is often perceived as an individual phenomenon, the grievers' family context before and after the death of a family member is always a stage set of their grief reactions. Operating from both meaning reconstruction and systemic perspectives, two case vignettes illustrate how the mourners' grief and adaptation were not only shaped by who…

During the Second World War, Nordic countries witnessed a large-scale displacement of the population as around 70,000 Finnish children were evacuated to other Nordic countries. While up to 15,000 of them did not return to Finland, the majority travelled back, carrying multiple ruptures in their close relationships: first from their biological…

Bereaved people frequently report perceiving the continued presence of the person they lost in the form of a voice, a vision, a felt presence or any other sensory perception. This report explores this psychological phenomenon, experiences of presence, using narrative interviewing and analysis. Ten people were interviewed, in English or Spanish,…

Despite the decline of rituals in North America, contemporary grief literature emphasises the healing potential of these practices. After my father's death, and due to my cultural hybridity as an Indo-Canadian, once the short-term western ways of mourning concluded, long-term Indian rituals offered meaningful and sustaining ways to honour my…

Purpose: The purpose of this contribution is to analyse a set of Holocaust survivor testimony transcripts in order to find out their educational value regarding the connection between antisemitism of the past and the present. The narrative analyses are used to generate questions that might be relevant for addressing certain curricular aims within…

The problem addressed in this study had two parts: a) which categories of grandparent(s) were the most frequently written about when college females are asked to write journals in order to express their feelings about their grandparents in their own words; and b) what is the thematic content of their journals about the various categories of…

This paper examines debates about the meaning and value of depression in relationship to efforts to teach about, and learn from, historical loss. It is argued that depression is not solely an individual illness or biological aberration, but a trace and effect of facing the many and profound losses--of culture, language and life--that constitute…

This study is based on original research that explored family reaction to the death of an elderly husband and father. We interviewed 34 families (a family included a widow and two adult biological children) approximately 6 to 10 months after the death. In one-on-one interviews, we discussed family members' initial reaction to the death, how the…

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…

Experiencing the death of a family member at a young age is a confusing time for many children. Some clinicians have reported that parental death is the most stressful life event for children, and some studies have traced adults' mental health difficulties to unresolved childhood grief (Balk, 1983; Krahnstoever, 2006). Despite the hardships…

Youths (N = 57; mean age = 13.83 years) residing near Tororo, Uganda, were interviewed to obtain quantitative and qualitative data pertaining to negative life events, adjustment problems, coping, social support, self-worth, and hope. On average, they experienced nearly half of the 22 negative life events assessed. The experience of negative life…

We investigated whether 3 self-system beliefs--fear of abandonment, coping efficacy, and self-esteem--mediated the relations between stressors and caregiver-child relationship quality and parentally bereaved youths' general grief and intrusive grief thoughts. Cross-sectional (n = 340 youth) and longitudinal (n = 100 youth) models were tested. In…

This study examined the continuing bond (CB) to the deceased in coping with the death of a husband. Fifteen early-bereaved widows whose husband had died 4 months previously and 15 later-bereaved widows whose husband had died more than 2 years ago were electronically signaled every 3 hours to complete a set of measures that included the PANAS…