The Negative Effects of Unresolved Grief Among Family Members

Bereavement and loss - The loss of a loved one such as a parent, sibling, grandparent or friend can turn a child’s world upside down. Grief can bring all sorts of emotions, upset, sadness, hurt and anger because they are gone and, fear because the child may be afraid of other loved ones dying too. A child can be affected by grief for a long period of time, and this may impact on their emotional and physical

The loss of an adult child is devastating, just as is the death of a younger child. However, there are differences as to how both the parents react to such losses. In this case the paper focuses on the loss of an adult child and how the parent copes with the situation. The paper will give insight into the situation that precedes the demise of the child such as the trajectory of illnesses. A review on how the parents deal with the loss after it occurs will be discussed as well as the various issues the parent faces. The impact on the parent after the child’s loss will also feature. There will be a summary of the findings, then a section that will give the implications of the research and its importance to the field of psychology, and finally an as well as focusing on the bigger picture of loss with older parents who have lost their children.

Grieving parents say that their grief is a lifelong process, a long and painful process..."a process in which [they] try to take and keep some meaning from the loss and life without the [child]" (Arnold and Gemma 1983, 57). After a child's death, parents embark on a long, sad journey that can be very frightening and extremely lonely- a journey that never really ends. The hope and desire that healing will come eventually is an intense and persistent one for grieving parents.

The last step is reorganization and restoration. This phase does not occur quickly. Here people begin to sort out suspicions and attempt to identify what was lost. There is a sense of release, renewed energy, more socialization, better judgments and more stable eating and sleeping habits. Readaptation to the loss does not mean forgetting. Adults can begin to restore emotional well being by acknowledging feelings, asking for support, reestablishing routines and reaching out to others. They can care for the needs of children by listening to their feelings and fears, providing information to clarify what occurred and whether it can affect their lives and by reestablishing routines that will comfort and reassure. There are many factors that influence the reaction of a child when death is announced to them. Factors include, the way the news is

Children who are grieving often struggle with life because they have lost a loved one. The loss may have been expected or unexpected, but the pain is still great. However, the way the person was lost and other factors surrounding the death, as well as the age of the child, can all affect how a counselor handles the child and his or her grief. Children can also grieve something other than a death, so there are many situations in which a child might need to see a grief counselor. Additionally, children who have been part of traumatic events where someone else has died may need more than just grief counseling because they will have survivor guilt and others issues which they will also have to face and work through. Empirical studies show that there are many different ways to provide a child with grief counseling, and that children can react very differently based on many characteristics. Counseling that is tailored to the child is the most significant way to help that child - and that is still not enough to convince every scholar that grief counseling actually has any benefit at all.

Grief and loss are one of the most universal human experiences, though painful, and understandably causes distress. However, approximately 15 % experience a more problematic grieving process with elevated symptoms of depression and/or posttraumatic stress symptoms (Bonanno and Kaltman, 1999).There is no well-established model of the timeline for resolution of grief and the variance of its expression is wide. Many persons cope with the emotional pain of bereavement without any formal intervention. However, individuals who have experienced traumatic bereavement, such as deaths that are sudden, violent, or due to human actions (Green 2000), may face particular challenges. Researchers have tried to define a model for the treatment of traumatic bereavement that fully supports not only the client, but also those working with the clients around their trauma

D1/D2/A1 For most people bereavement will be the most troubling experience they will ever face. Grief is what we feel when somebody that is close to us has died everyone experiences grief in different way there is no correct way for someone to grief. For many children and young people the death of a parent or sibling is an experience they are faced with early in life. Children and young people need to be given the opportunity to grieve ignoring the child’s grief is not protective and can be damaging. Children and young people regardless of their age need to be encouraged to talk about how they are feeling and supported to understand their emotions. During their development children do not understand that death in irreversible this can be shown as children do not understand the term death

In America’s current culture death is a taboo subject that many individuals feel awkward talking about. Most individuals feel uncomfortable simply after hearing the word. After facing a death, the large majority of people decide to isolate themselves dealing with their grief alone. Bereavement is a complex feeling of emotions that many people do not know how to face on their own. Each individual goes through the bereavement process differently. Society usually focuses on adult grief, but lack to give attention towards children in these situations. Most people think that children are too young and naïve to feel and understand these emotions about grief. However, this is not the case children actually have complex emotions just like adults. Also children are very curious about death and need attention from adult to gain a full

The purpose of this study is to review literature related to the effects of parental death on children. Children who experience the death of a parent is considered an at risk population for psychological, behavioral, and social problems. There are many factors relating to the way children adjust to parental death. Some of these factors include the age of the child,

This question has been posed by many philosophers, religious leaders and psychologists for centuries, yet has been a potent taboo in society even today. As the field of psychology is gaining ground and knowledge in how behaviors affect the way in which we interact with others, we are discovering new ways to approach and view the mental processes of a human and apply them to how a person grieves that loss. But while oft times those assumptions, hypothesis, and theories are made by adults for adults, the child is a more difficult subject in which to study since it has not achieved its mature mental

It is believed that children do not experience grief until one has been through adolescents and can distinguish thoughts and feeling from emotions. According to Glass (1991), a child can grasp the notion of death during early childhood; and can begin to grief as early as six months (Willis, 2002). Willis (2002) believes from a moderate perspective that children begin to understand death and grieve approximately at three to four years old. Many times, small children are affected by loss and their grief is often underestimated. Children between the ages of three to five years old fall into stage one. During stage one; children view death as a going away from one place to another. It is believed that the deceased person has just relocated and is living in a new location. Stage two consists of children between the ages of five to nine years of old. In this phase, death can be fixed. It is thought that if one

Grief and its effects is considered in this paper with the purpose of better understanding how it affects a person. Grief is a natural reaction to loss and change which affects all aspects of a person’s life: the physical, emotional, psychological, behavioral, and spiritual. Grief is not expected but will be experienced in a variety of ways such as experienced, sudden, gradual or anticipated. While most people will experience loss at one time in their lives, not everyone responds in the same way or goes through the same process to recover and heal.

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and

The loss of an adult child is devastating just as is the death of a younger child. However, there are differences as to how both the parents react to such losses. In this case the paper focuses on loss of an adult child and how the parent copes with the situation. The paper will give insight on the situation that precedes the demise of the child such as trajectory of illnesses which is more recent. A review on how the parents deal with the loss after it occurs will be discussed as well as the various issues the parent faces. The impact on the parent after the child’s loss is also featured. There will be a summary of the findings then finally a section that will give the implications of the research and its importance to the field of psychology and an improvement in human beings

This essay explores several models and theories that discuss the complexities of loss and grief. A discussion of the tasks, reactions and understanding of grief through the different stages from infants to the elderly, will also be attempted.