Relationships in Families after a Family Member’s Death: A Qualitative Metasynthesis

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to understand the bereavement of a family as a unit from multiple perspectives. Using qualitative metasynthesis, we described family members’ bereavement experiences from multiple perspectives. The most common perspectives reported were those of parents who had lost their children. No studies reported the perspectives of husbands. Every article explicitly or implicitly referred to a continued connection with the deceased and the effect of this connection on family relationships. This article addresses the importance of focusing on more than one relationship within a family, which should be investigated further in future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Bereavement
• family relationship
• qualitative metasynthesis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mami Kasahara-Kiritani

Mami Kasahara-Kiritani is an associated researcher at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden; and a visiting researcher at the Department of Family Nursing, the University of Tokyo, Japan. She has published articles and has research interests in the areas of mental health and suicide prevention.

Ryota Kikuchi

Ryota Kikuchi is a PhD candidate at the Department of Family Nursing, the University of Tokyo, Japan. He has published papers in the field of health-related quality of life in parents of pediatric solid organ transplant recipients.

Mari Ikeda

Mari Ikeda is a professor in the School of Nursing at Tokyo Women’s Medical University. She is a registered nurse and a clinical psychologist. The topic of her PhD research was the relationship between attachment style and postpartum depression, findings from which were published in Attachment and Human Development. Now she is working on incorporating lessons learned through her program development study into interpersonal group therapy for cancer patients.

Kiyoko Kamibeppu

Kiyoko Kamibeppu is a professor at the Department of Family Nursing, the University of Tokyo, Japan. She focuses her research on childhood cancer survivorship and prevention of child abuse.