Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 2007
Grief therapies with children are becoming increasingly popular in the mental health community. N... more 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.
Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 2009
Recent studies have supported the distinctiveness of complicated and prolonged forms of grief as ... more Recent studies have supported the distinctiveness of complicated and prolonged forms of grief as a cluster of symptoms that is separate from other psychiatric disorders. The distinction between prolonged and normal reactions to loss remains unclear, however, with some believing that prolonged grief represents a qualitatively distinct clinical entity and others conceptualizing it as the extreme end of a continuum. Thus, in this study a taxometric methodology was used to examine the underlying structure of grief. Participants included 1,069 bereaved individuals who had lost a first-degree relative. Each participant completed the Dutch version of the Inventory of Complicated Grief–Revised, which was used to create indicators of prolonged grief. The mean above and mean below a cut (MAMBAC) and maximum eigenvalue (MAXEIG) tests supported a dimensional conceptualization, indicating that pathological reactions might be best defined by the severity of grief symptoms rather than the presence or absence of specific symptoms.
Some 18 months after her husband’s death, Martha, aged 63, describes herself as “drowning in a se... more Some 18 months after her husband’s death, Martha, aged 63, describes herself as “drowning in a sea of grief.” Far from moving toward some form of recovery, she experiences herself as “stuck” in a futile protest against the impossibility of living without John, who had been the “compass” for her life for the past two decades. Without the special caring, attunement, and structure he provided her, Martha feels “disoriented,” “unreal,” as if his death is “just some sort of terrible joke” on the part of a malicious God. John’s fast demise from an aggressive cancer gave her little time to adapt to the harsh reality of his impending loss, but Martha confesses that she spent the majority of this “warning period” actively resisting the knowledge of his eventual death, just as she continues to resist the full emotional implications of his absence. Now, she feels deeply lonely and “cut-off” from others, with the exception of her concerned adult son and daughter, and is caught up in an angry “fight” with John’s children by a previous marriage about the estate. Because the dispute arose partly from critical ambiguities in his will, Martha confesses that she also feels betrayed by John, and wonders whether his apparent love for her was really “a lie.” She therefore feels as if his death not only deprived her of a hoped-for future with John in retirement, but also eroded a cherished view of their past. Tearfully, she describes how she has “no purpose for living” since John’s death, and as her health has begun to suffer as a result of the stress of the loss, she finds herself wishing that it were she, rather than he, who had died.
Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 2007
Grief therapies with children are becoming increasingly popular in the mental health community. N... more 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.
Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 2009
Recent studies have supported the distinctiveness of complicated and prolonged forms of grief as ... more Recent studies have supported the distinctiveness of complicated and prolonged forms of grief as a cluster of symptoms that is separate from other psychiatric disorders. The distinction between prolonged and normal reactions to loss remains unclear, however, with some believing that prolonged grief represents a qualitatively distinct clinical entity and others conceptualizing it as the extreme end of a continuum. Thus, in this study a taxometric methodology was used to examine the underlying structure of grief. Participants included 1,069 bereaved individuals who had lost a first-degree relative. Each participant completed the Dutch version of the Inventory of Complicated Grief–Revised, which was used to create indicators of prolonged grief. The mean above and mean below a cut (MAMBAC) and maximum eigenvalue (MAXEIG) tests supported a dimensional conceptualization, indicating that pathological reactions might be best defined by the severity of grief symptoms rather than the presence or absence of specific symptoms.
Some 18 months after her husband’s death, Martha, aged 63, describes herself as “drowning in a se... more Some 18 months after her husband’s death, Martha, aged 63, describes herself as “drowning in a sea of grief.” Far from moving toward some form of recovery, she experiences herself as “stuck” in a futile protest against the impossibility of living without John, who had been the “compass” for her life for the past two decades. Without the special caring, attunement, and structure he provided her, Martha feels “disoriented,” “unreal,” as if his death is “just some sort of terrible joke” on the part of a malicious God. John’s fast demise from an aggressive cancer gave her little time to adapt to the harsh reality of his impending loss, but Martha confesses that she spent the majority of this “warning period” actively resisting the knowledge of his eventual death, just as she continues to resist the full emotional implications of his absence. Now, she feels deeply lonely and “cut-off” from others, with the exception of her concerned adult son and daughter, and is caught up in an angry “fight” with John’s children by a previous marriage about the estate. Because the dispute arose partly from critical ambiguities in his will, Martha confesses that she also feels betrayed by John, and wonders whether his apparent love for her was really “a lie.” She therefore feels as if his death not only deprived her of a hoped-for future with John in retirement, but also eroded a cherished view of their past. Tearfully, she describes how she has “no purpose for living” since John’s death, and as her health has begun to suffer as a result of the stress of the loss, she finds herself wishing that it were she, rather than he, who had died.
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