Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies

Drawing upon extensive interviews and assessments of school-age children who have lost a parent to death, this book offers a richly textured portrait of the mourning process in children. The volume presents major findings from the Harvard Child Bereavement Study and places them in the context of previous research, shedding new light on both the wide range of normal variation in children’s experience of grief and the factors that put bereaved children at risk. The book also compares parentally bereaved children with those who have suffered loss of a sibling to death, or of a parent through divorce, exploring similarities and differences in these experiences of loss. A concluding section explores the clinical implications of the findings and includes a review of intervention models and activities, as well as a screening instrument designed to help identify high-risk bereaved children. This book will be of interest to child psychologists and psychiatrists; counselors, social workers and other helping professionals who work with grieving families; students and researchers in child and family psychology and bereavement. It serves as a text in advanced courses on bereavement, family and child therapy, and developmental psychopathology.