Coping and grief symptoms after parental loss in adolescence - a nationwide follow-up study

Abstract

Knowledge about effective coping strategies is important to support bereaved adolescents who have lost a parent. We used data on 104 bereaved adolescents (13–17 years) from the FALCON nationwide questionnaire study of parentally bereaved families. We examined associations between adolescents’ control-oriented and escape-oriented coping strategies (KidCOPE scale) approximately two months after loss and grief symptoms (PG-13 scale) at six months follow-up. We also examined associations between the perceived efficacy of each coping strategy at baseline and grief symptoms at six months. The use of escape-oriented coping (e.g., distraction, self-criticism and social withdrawal) was associated with higher grief symptoms at six months follow-up (β = 0.4, 95% CI 0.1–0.9, p = 0.02), but no associations were found for control-oriented coping or perceived coping efficacy. Finding alternatives to the use of escape-oriented coping strategies may be an important part of grief interventions for bereaved adolescents.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the families who participated in the FALCON cohort study for their generous and invaluable contribution, and Tatiana Hansen for her assistance with data management.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research data is not available. However, we welcome research collaborations.

Additional information

Funding

This study was carried out with funding from the Danish Cancer Society Psychosocial Research Committee [Grant no. R119-A7589-15-S-35] and a grant from the Aase and Einar Danielsen’s Foundation.