Adolescent Grief

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Topic Sentence: Psychological or social effects on adolescents who experience the death of a parent. When we think of grief we normally think of adults grieving, generally we don’t think of children and adolescents suffering from grief. We wanted to take a closer look as to what the psychological effects of grief are on adolescents, specifically when the adolescent loses a parent. In the first article I read, Phenomenology and Correlates of Complicated Grief in Children and Adolescents, studied 125 children and adolescents of parents who died by suicide, accident, or sudden natural death, ages ranging from 7-18 years old. The researchers created a modified version of the Inventory of Complicated Grief-Revised (ICG-R) that was administered, …show more content…

In 1-group, grief reactions showed no change 33 months after death, children and adolescents with prolonged grief reactions had higher rates of previous personal history of depression (Melhem et al., 2011). On the other hand, when the children, adolescents, and surviving caregivers experience prolonged grief, they become more susceptible to being diagnosed with depression (Melhem et al., 2011). Another group studied showed increased grief reactions 9 months after the death of a parent, decreasing gradually after 9 months, despite this finding, grief reactions in this group also were associated with functional impairment and increased risk of incident depression (Melhem et al., 2011.) The study performed by Melhem (2011) and her colleagues hypothesize that, during the first 3 years after parental death, a subset of parentally bereaved children and adolescents will have a prolonged grief reaction (PGR) consistent with adult complicated grief, which can be predicted by a prior personal or family history of psychiatric disorders (Melhem et al., 2011). According to the article, Grief in Children and Adolescents Bereaved by Sudden Parental Death, those bereaved children and adolescents with a PGR will have functional impairment beyond that attributed to other psychiatric disorders, as well as increased incidence and earlier onset of