Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T11:40:43.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parental relationships beyond the grave: Adolescents' descriptions of continued bonds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2015

Dana M. Hansen ,
Denice K. Sheehan ,
Pamela S. Stephenson  and
M. Murray Mayo
Dana M. Hansen*
Affiliation:
Kent State University, College of Nursing, Kent, Ohio
Denice K. Sheehan
Affiliation:
Kent State University, College of Nursing, Kent, Ohio
Pamela S. Stephenson
Affiliation:
Kent State University, College of Nursing, Kent, Ohio
M. Murray Mayo
Affiliation:
Ursuline College, Breen School of Nursing, Pepper Pike, Ohio
*
Address correspondence and reprint request to Dana M. Hansen, Kent State University, College of Nursing, Kent, Ohio. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Objective:

Many people experience an ongoing relationship with a deceased loved one. This is called a “continued bond.” However, little is known about the adolescent experience with continued bonds once a parent has died. This study describes three ways that adolescents continue their relationship with a parent after that parent's death.

Method:

Individual semistructured interviews were conducted with nine adolescent children of deceased hospice patients from a large hospice in northeastern Ohio as part of a larger grounded-theory study. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using a conventional content analysis approach.

Results:

Adolescents continued their bonds with deceased parents in one of three ways: experiencing encounters with the deceased parent, listening to the inner guide of the parent, and keeping mementos to remind them of the parent.

Significance of results:

The ways that the adolescents continued their bond with a deceased parent assisted them in creating meaning out of their loss and adjusting to life without that parent. Our results can be used by health professionals and parents to help adolescents after a parent has died.

Keywords

Adolescent bereavementAdolescent griefContinued bondsMeaning making
Type
Original Articles
Information
Palliative & Supportive Care , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , August 2016 , pp. 358 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Brewer, J.D. & Sparkes, A.C. (2011). Young people living with parental bereavement: Insights from an ethnographic study of a UK childhood bereavement service. Social Science & Medicine, 72, 283–290.Google Scholar
Boerner, K. & Heckhausen, J. (2003). To have and have not: Adaptive bereavement by transforming mental ties to the deceased. Death Studies, 27, 199–266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cerel, J., Fristad, M.A., Verducci, J., et al. (2006). Childhood bereavement: Psychopathology in the 2 years post parental death. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 45(6), 681–690.Google Scholar
Chan, C.W., Chow, A.Y., Ho, S.M.Y, et al. (2005). The experience of Chinese bereaved persons: A preliminary study of meaning making and continuing bonds. Death Studies, 29, 923–947.Google Scholar
Christ, G.H., Siegel, K. & Christ, A.E. (2002). Adolescent grief: “It never really hit me … until it actually happened.” The Journal of the American Medical Association, 288(10), 1269–1278.Google Scholar
Field, N.P. (2006). Continuing bonds in adaptation to bereavement: Introduction. Death Studies, 30, 709–714.Google Scholar
Frankl, V. (1962). Man's search for meaning. New York: Touchstone Books.Google Scholar
Gibbs, M., Meese, J., Arnold, M., et al. (2015). #Funeral and Instagram: Death, social media, and platform vernacular. Information, Communication & Society, 18(3), 255–268.Google Scholar
Gillies, J. & Neimeyer, R.A. (2006). Loss, grief, and the search for significance: Toward a model of meaning reconstruction in bereavement. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 19, 31–65.Google Scholar
Gray, L.B., Weller, R.A., Fristad, M., et al. (2011). Depression in children and adolescents two months after the death of a parent. Journal of Affective Disorders, 135, 277–283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Groves, R. F. & Klauser, H.A. (2005). The American book of dying: Lessons in healing spiritual pain. Berkeley: Celestial Arts.Google Scholar
Hansen, D.M., Higgins, P.A., Warner Beckette, C., et al. (2014). Exploring family relationships through associations of comfort, relatedness states, and life closure in hospice patients: A pilot study. Palliative & Supportive Care, 13(2), 305–311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howell, K.H., Shapiro, D.N., Layne, C.M., et al. (2015). Individual and psychosocial mechanisms of adaptive functioning in parentally bereaved children. Death Studies, 39(5), 296–306.Google Scholar
Hsieh, H. & Shannon, S. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15(9), 1277–1288.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Janoff-Bulman, R. & Frantz, C. M. (1997). The impact of trauma on meaning: From meaningless world to meaningful life. In The transformation of meaning in psychological therapies: Integrating theory and practice. Power, M. & Brewin, C. (eds.), pp. 91–106. Sussex, England: Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Klass, D. (2006). Continuing conversations about continuing bonds. Death Studies, 30, 843–858.Google Scholar
Meleis, A.I., Sawyer, L.M., Im, E.O., et al. (2000). Experiencing transitions: An emerging middle range theory. Advances in Nursing Science, 23(1), 12–28.Google Scholar
Mitchell, L.M., Stephenson, P.H., Cadell, S., et al. (2012). Death and grief online: Virtual memorialization and changing concepts of childhood death and parental bereavement on the internet. Health Sociology Review, 21(4), 413–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neimeyer, R.A., Baldwin, S.A. & Gillies, J. (2006). Continuing bonds and reconstructing meaning: Mitigating complications in bereavement. Death Studies, 30, 715–738.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pennington, N. (2013). You don't de-friend the dead: An analysis of grief communication by college students through Facebook profiles. Death Studies, 37, 617–635.Google Scholar
Sanger, M. (2009). When clients sense the presence of loved ones who have died. Omega, 59(1), 69–89.Google Scholar
Sheehan, D.K. & Draucker, C.B. (2011). Interaction patterns between parents with advanced cancer and their adolescent children. Psycho-Oncology, 20, 1108–1115.Google Scholar
Sheehan, D.K., Draucker, C.B., Christ, G.H., et al. (2014). Telling adolescents a parent is dying. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 17(5), 1–9.Google Scholar
Sheehan, D., Draucker, C., Christ, G., et al. (2014). Two worlds: Adolescents' strategies for managing life with a parent in hospice. Journal of Palliative Care, 30(3), 206–207.Google Scholar
Suhail, K., Jamil, N., Oyebode, J., et al. (2011). Continuing bonds in bereaved Pakistani Muslims: Effects of culture and religion. Death Studies, 35(1), 22–41.Google Scholar
Taylor, S.E. (1983). Adjustment to threatening events: A theory of cognitive adaptation. The American Psychologist, 38(11), 1161–1173. Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.38.11.1161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, R.J., Dietz, L.J., Stoyak, S., et al. (2013). A prospective study of parentally bereaved youth, caregiver depression, and body mass index. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 74(8), 834–840.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration (2011). Age and sex composition, 2010: 2010 Census brief. Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf.Google Scholar