Grief is a family affair: Grief dynamics in parent-child dyads
Method Stream: Longitudinal Intensive Methods
ECs: 14EC
Approximately 140 million children worldwide face the death of a parent and even more loose a sibling. Prolonged grief disorder is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders after the death of a loved one. One in ten bereaved children is at risk of prolonged grief. Similar prolonged grief disorder rates have been found in bereaved adults.
Prolonged grief disorder has only recently been recognized as a serious mental disorder in the two most commonly used classification systems in psychiatry. Prolonged grief entered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) in 2022 and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in 2018. It is characterized by persistent separation distress (e.g., “Preoccupation with thoughts or memories of the person who you have lost”) and cognitive, behavioral, and emotion symptoms (e.g., “Intense loneliness as a result of the loss”). Symptoms of prolonged grief are distinct from posttraumatic stress and depression symptoms. Prolonged grief is diagnosable in children 6 months post-loss when symptoms are so intense that they disrupt functioning in daily life. Without treatment, prolonged grief severity remains relatively stable and therefore may continue to negatively impact children’s functioning.
Research on (mechanisms of) prolonged grief has mainly focused on adult populations. In comparison, there is limited research focusing on bereaved children (age <18). Moreover, current research on is focused on individuals in isolation, while multiple people are affected by the same loss. We therefore argue that grief is a family affair: that is, prolonged grief is infectious between parents and children.
Family life after loss takes place in everyday life. To fully understand family life, fine-grained research methods are needed. Current grief research is, however, dominated by retrospectively recalling experiences, e.g., during the past week. This is prone to recall bias and lacks the ability to study how grief unfolds in daily life. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), also called experience sampling, is a fine-gained longitudinal data-collection method and an ecologically valid way to measure prolonged grief in daily life. In EMA-research, people are asked to complete a brief set of questions multiple times per day usually on their phone.
Recent work shows that EMA is acceptable and feasible to study the fluctuating and context-dependent nature of prolonged grief in adults. Yet, it remains to be examined to what extent grief reactions in parents affect grief reactions in their children. Mechanisms of grief transmission within bereaved families are also unknown. The main aim of this project is to examine (mechanisms of) grief transmission effects in bereaved families.
This aim can be achieved by asking parent-child dyads, who are cohabiting and whose household member (human not pet) died at least 6 months earlier, to complete a brief set of questions multiple times per day on their phone for four weeks. We focus on children aged 12-20 (including university students). One parent-child dyad per household can participate. At the start and at the end of the EMA-phase, surveys are completed by parents and children. For your thesis, you can work with the survey-data that are collected at the start and/or end of the EMA-phase, but it is also possible to work with the EMA-data in case you are interested in that.
This project takes place in collaboration with researchers and students from University of Groningen, University of Twente, and Utrecht University. Multiple students can work on this project together. Students will among others help with recruiting participants. Data-collection takes place in Dutch, English, and German. You can chose which language you would like to work with for collecting data. Your thesis will be written on all available data.
Students can work on this project in the academic year 2024/2025.
References
Alvis, L., Zhang, N., Sandler, I. N., & Kaplow, J. B. (2022). Developmental Manifestations of Grief in Children and Adolescents: Caregivers as Key Grief Facilitators. Journal of child & adolescent trauma, 16(2), 447–457. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-021-00435-0
Lenferink, L. I. M., van Eersel, J. H. W., & Franzen, M. (2022). Is it acceptable and feasible to measure prolonged grief disorder symptoms in daily life using experience sampling methodology? Comprehensive psychiatry, 119, 152351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2022.152351
Lenferink, L. I. M., & O’Connor, M. (2023). Grief is a family affair: examining longitudinal associations between prolonged grief in parents and their adult children using four-wave cross-lagged panel models. Psychological Medicine, 53(15), 7428–7434. doi:10.1017/S0033291723001101
Lundorff M, Holmgren H, Zachariae R, Farver-Vestergaard I, O'Connor M. (2017). Prevalence of prolonged grief disorder in adult bereavement: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Affect Disord, 212, 138-149. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2017.01.030.
Myin-Germeys, I., Kasanova, Z., Vaessen, T., Vachon, H., Kirtley, O., Viechtbauer, W., & Reininghaus, U. (2018). Experience sampling methodology in mental health research: new insights and technical developments. World psychiatry, 17(2), 123–132. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20513