The Role Of Coping With Death And Loss In Children

“Childhood bereavement is one of society’s most chronically painful, yet rarely examined, and most underestimated phenomena,” explained Lynn Hughes, founder and chief advocate of Comfort Zone Camp. Between November 24 and December 7, 2009, Comfort Zone and Mathew Greenwald and associates conducted a survey of 1,006 adults, over the age of 25, to determine what percentage of them had suffered a significant loss before the age of 20. To their surprise, of the 1,006 people survey, 11% of them had lost at least one parent during their childhood. A loss of such caliber is one a child should never have to face, but it happens more often than we think. The effects of such a loss varies from child to child. For some, it could have a positive outcome.

After reading two articles focusing on the families of death row inmates, the next article Children of the Condemned: Grieving the Loss of a Father to Death Row focuses on the children affected by having a father on death row. Beck and Jones (2008) examined the effects of a death sentence on children of the condemned. Additionally, the article discusses the concept of disenfranchised grief and nonfinite loss that form the children 's grief process. Beck and Jones (2008) conducted their study by interviewing nineteen children of death row inmates, through lawyers and having parental consent. The data from Beck and Jones (2008) study showed “The most prevalent theme was the children’s discussion of the importance of having their parent in their

The loss of a loved one can in many cases cause feelings of grief and a wide range of emotions

Death is inescapable, irreversible and always unpredictable and has a major effect on everyone that lost a love one. Grief is defined as the reaction we have in response to a death or loss. Grief can affect everything our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Some people handle deaths differently from others some people are more vulnerable to the effects of grief than others. Experiencing a traumatic loss, such as the death of a love on gives higher risks for physical or mental illness. J.D Salinger classic novel the catcher in the rye reflects on the life of Holden Caulfield life and his emotional breakdown and his self isolation at penecy prep. The loss of Holden little brother and the school environment changed his perspective on

PTSD can occur while facing either a direct or indirect event. A direct event is a trauma that personally happened to you compared to an indirect event is a trauma you heard of. Medical intervention, abuse and the loss of a loved one are examples of direct and indirect events. Any child that undergoes different procedures and surgeries in a hospital setting can become traumatizing. The kids are exposed to direct events because it is personally happening to them. “Children with serious disease such as cancer and children who undergo hospitalisation for paediatric injury have also been shown to suffer from PTSD” (Dyregrov & Yule 2006). For example, cancer survivors have a bigger chance of getting PTSD if their treatment time was longer. Due to the amount of time they spent in operating

The death of a parent can conjure up a myriad of feelings that persist through childhood and often times linger into adulthood. Several reputable

Melinda Smith and Jeanne Segal’s informational article, “ Coping with Grief and Loss”, published on the Help Guide Website, has the central idea about grieving people needing support and attention to cope with grief. Grief will naturally respond to loss and it is a lonely and emotional process that a grieving person would feel when someone or something is gone. So people would want the experience hurried or forced to be coped with but grieving people will need attention and support to deal with grief. Grieving people can get support and attention by sharing their experience with others, by joining a support group, or talking to a therapist or a grief counselor. They can also just take care of themselves physically and emotionally by facing

Hayslip, Bert, Jr., Jessica H. Pruett, and Daniela M. Caballero. “The ‘how’ and ‘when’ of parental loss in adulthood: effects on grief and adjustment.” OMEGA – The Journal Of Death and Dying 71.1 (2015): 3+. Health Reference Center Academic. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Death has always been a psychological problem for anyone who has lost loved ones, whether it be family or close friends. Getting over the death is really the hard part of the grieving process. The grieving process can be a long process depending on the relationships between you and the loved one because we never want to come to the conclusion that they are gone forever. Chappel and Mathieu (1997) said that there is no other way to cope with death than the five stages of grief and if one was to ignore the stages, it would just come at a later date and possibly will take more time to heal from a death. Following the death of a loved one, there are five stages of grief that one must experience in order to cope with death and enter tranquility.

The portrayal regarding the process one goes thru while grieving was at times consistent with the theories described by William Worden’ task model, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, as well as Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut’s dual-model of grieving.

In todays world one in nine children lose a parent before they are twenty years old (Hello). Losing a parent at a young age is a life-changing event. It can turn a child’s life upside down, and flood them with countless emotions. All children handle this event in different ways. Shelly Aldrich of Hawarden, Iowa, lost her mother when she was seventeen years old and spoke to me about her life growing up without her mother.

Grieving is a necessary component of adjustment to the loss. Communication is also a very necessary component to adjusting. Time is important, cultural differences are apparent; some cultures celebrate death, even though there is other types of loss, other cultures grieve death. Some individuals celebrate divorce with parties, others go into deep depression, the environment, and ethnicity and religion play a major role in adaptation.

She sits there, a fifteen year old ball of emotions just waiting to burst. In class she thinks as hard as she can trying to make connections between the things on the board. She does her work and turns it in, hoping for a good grade. It is hard to imagine that sixteen years later she is calm, content, and confident. Time makes a lot of differences one of which is to the brain itself. There are a lot of ways that the adolescent's brain is different from an adults. One reason that an adolescent's brain is different from an adults is that a child’s brain is not fully developed. Most adolescents have a lack of impulse control. They cannot resist things that are tempting. If one of their friends is doing something risky that may harm themselves

Losing an older family member is hard, but at the same time it’s expected. It’s something you already know you have to prepare for. When you lose a young person, however, it is a vastly different experience. When you lose a friend, when you stand at their funeral it ignites a fire beneath you. After the tears have dried and the people have left, you make a silent vow to protect the rest of your friends. You hope and pray and do everything in your power to make sure you never have to bury another one of them.

Most people will agree that a child should never have to go through an accident, a chronic illness, or even hospitalization because he or she is so young and innocent; however, it is a sad reality that children around the world are hospitalized daily for an assortment of medical reasons. Children who undergo hospitalization experience a loss of normalcy and autonomy. Oftentimes, children who are hospitalized are faced with difficult treatment plans that can disrupt his or her once seemingly normal life. Unfortunately, death is an actual possibility for some children who are hospitalized, which can be a difficult concept to grasp. The understanding of death varies by chronological age, personality, family situations, and developmental ages. Child life specialists (CLS) play a vital role when a family finds themselves dealing with end-of-life care for a child. CLS provide education, emotional support, preparation, and advocacy to both the patient and the family. CLS provide play-based psychosocial interventions to patients and their families in order to minimize stress in the hospital environment. It is important that students emerging into the child life field are knowledgeable on end-of-life situations and are able to provide the best psychosocial care to children and families while minimizing their stress during these difficult times.