Karger, Melanie. Exploring mothers' experiences over time following death of their young child from cancer. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3R49P74
DescriptionThis qualitative research study provides an in-depth exploration of a sample of bereaved mothers’ experiences over time following the death of their young child from cancer ten or more years ago. Eight mothers completed semi-structured interviews containing questions about their bereavement experience over time. Through a grounded theory analysis of the data eight major themes emerged consistently across subjects. In interpreting these major themes three overarching themes or meta themes have been identified. These meta themes encompass different yet overlapping aspects of the adaptation to the bereavement process: (a) the phenomenological: losing a child is a transformative experience; (b) the structural: child loss is unique among losses; and (c) the theoretical: the nature of continuing bonds and its grounding in attachment theory. Clinical implications for working with bereaved mothers are discussed.