Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies

Drawing upon extensive interviews and assessments of school-age children who have lost a parent to death, this book offers a richly textured portrait of the mourning process in children. The volume presents major findings from the Child Bereavement Study and places them in the context of previous research, shedding new light on both the wide range of normal variation in children’s experience of grief and the factors that put bereaved children at risk. The book also compares parentally bereaved children with those who have suffered loss of a sibling to death, or of a parent through divorce, exploring similarities and differences in these experiences of loss. A concluding section explores the clinical implications of the findings and includes a review of intervention models and activities, as well as a screening instrument designed to help identify high-risk bereaved children.

Bio updated 9/01 for paperback release

J. William Worden, PhD, ABPP, holds academic appointments at Harvard Medical School and the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology in California. He is also Co-Principal Investigator of the Harvard Child Bereavement Study, based at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His clinical practice is in Newport Beach, California.