Parents Coping with the Death of their Child

Abstract

This poster examines four articles that look into how parents cope with the death of their child. Though this is a subject that a lot of people do not like to acknowledge, and therefore do not acknowledge, the reality is that there are children who die every day. When this happens, there are parents who have just lost a child and who are hurt and feel the effects of this loss for years to come. When a child dies, it interrupts the lives of parents and causes major distress. There are various causes to the dying of these children, and the cause of death affects how the parents of these children cope with their child’s death and adjust to life after. Though this specific subject has not been explored in depth very much, research shows that interpersonal and intrapersonal processes are related to the adjustment process of parents after they have lost a child (Meij et al., 2008) but that cause of death does not have much of an effect on how long it takes the parents to adjust after their loss of a child (Fan, Johnson, Lohan, Murphy, & Wu, 2003).