2011/09/13 by William Feigelman, John R. Jordan, Bernard S. Gorman · 1 citation
Medicine · Psychology · #Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health #Migration, Health and Trauma #Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
paper · doi:10.2190/om.63.4.a
openalex publication_date 2011/09/13 · crossref created 2011/09/13 · crossref issued 2011/12/01 · crossref published 2011/12/01 · crossref published-online 2011/12/01 · crossref published-print 2011/12/01 · crossref deposited 2025/03/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
This comparative survey contrasted 571 parents who lost children to various death causes: 48 to drug-related deaths and overdoses, 462 to suicide, 24 to natural death cases, and 37 to mostly accidental death cases. Groups were compared in terms of grief difficulties, mental health problems, posttraumatic stress, and stigmatization. Results did not show any appreciable differences in these respects between the suicide bereaved parents and those losing children to drug-related deaths. However, when the suicide and drug-related death survivors were specifically contrasted against accidental and natural death loss cases, a consistent pattern emerged showing the former group was consistently more troubled by grief and mental health problems than the latter two sub-groups. These differences remained when controls of time since the loss and gender differences were employed as covariates. These findings suggest that the powerful and intense stigma against drug use and mental illness, shared among the public-at-large, imposes challenges in healing of immense proportion for these parents as they find less compassionate responses from their significant others, following their losses.