Relational and Spiritual Dimensions of Parental Grieving Les Dimensions relationnelles et spirituelles du deuil chez les parents

Over past 20 years scholarly interest in role of spirituality in health and social sciences has increased significantly (Paloutzian & Park, 2013). Particular attention has been paid to role of spirituality in coping with a wide variety of health and mental health challenges (Pargament, 1997). One of most notable and consistent findings in this regard is that spirituality appears to be especially salient for those individuals who have been pushed to limits of their existence and who have encountered life-changing events, such as diagnosis of a cancer (Gall & Comblât, 2002) or death of a child (Klass, 1999).The topic of death in general, and death of a child in particular, is likely to invoke existential concerns in those who suffer from loss (Center for Advancement of Health, 2004). Qualitative and quantitative research programs have drawn attention to suffering of bereaved parents and explored ways in which they have attempted to cope with loss of their child and readjust their lives to fit this new and tragic reality (Murphy, Johnson, & Lohan, 2003). Most researchers and clinicians (Janzen, Cadell, & Westhues, 2003-2004) acknowledge that loss of a child is one of most devastating losses for parents, and that this loss puts parents at significant risk for physical and mental health problems, including increased suicidal ideation (Harper, O'Connor, Dickson, & O'Carroll, 2011; Murphy, Tapper, Johnson, & Lohan, 2003), higher levels of posttraumatic stress disorder as compared to normative populations (Murphy, 2008), increased risk of complicated or traumatic grief (Bennett, Litz, Sarnoff Lee, & Maguen, 2005), increased rates of depression and anxiety (Kreicbergs, Valdimarsdottir, Onelov, Henter, & Steinbeck, 2004), higher rates of paternal alcohol abuse (Vance, Boyle, Najman, & Thearle, 2002), increase in marital/relational disruption (Rogers, Floyd, Seltzer, Greenberg, & Hong, 2008), reduced sexual contact post loss (Dyregrov & Gjestad, 2011), and even an increased risk of mortality (Cohen-Mansfield, Shmotkin, Malkinson, Bartur, & Hazan, 2013; Li, Hansen Precht, Mortensen, & Olsen, 2003).One of main reasons for these health risks is that loss of a child is generally considered to be an unnatural event (Davies, 2004), an event that reverses biological order of birth and death and undermines parents' assumptive worlds (Christ, Bonanno, Malkinson, & Rubin, 2003; Hibberd, Vandenberg, & Wamser, 2011). Given that modern societies have largely banished death from consciousness (Greenberg, Koole, & Pyszczynski, 2004) and that modern medicine continues to chip away at ever-declining child mortality rates (Ahmad, Lopez, & Inoue, 2000), most parents do not expect to deal with loss of a child and are thus ill-prepared to cope with such a trauma (Prigerson, Vanderwerker, & Maciejewski, 2008). Furthermore, medical and spiritual communities often have relatively few resources to aid suffering parents (Massey, 2000), despite fact that many of major world religions explicitly deal with meaning of death, and that for some, such as Christianity, death of the son is central spiritual narrative (Klass & Goss, 1999). Many parents find themselves alone and at a significant loss about how to cope with such a devastating and all-encompassing crisis (D'Agostino, Berlin-Romalis, Jovcevska, & Barerra, 2008).One consistent theme that has emerged in clinical and research literature on child loss is that many parents cope with their loss through engaging their spiritual beliefs and practices (Attig, 1996). Researchers who have begun to explore ways in which spiritual resources may contribute to recovery from child loss have generally found them to function as a protective factor against complicated grief, contributing to adjustment and recovery process (Gillies & Neimeyer, 2006). …

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