Grief, parenting, and schizophrenia

Daniel J. Davis and Cynthia L. Schultz

Social Science & Medicine, 1998, vol. 46, issue 3, 369-379

Abstract: It is argued that a child with schizophrenia represents an ongoing source of loss and grief for parents. The study aimed to (a) validate the presence of grief in mothers and fathers of children with schizophrenia, and (b)explore whether the hours of parental contact with the child influences the strength of grief reactions. The mean age (62 years) of the 16 mother-father dyads constituted an investigation of older parents, for 43% of whom the duration of diagnosed schizophrenia was over 10 years. Grief was conceptualised as a cognitive, behavioural, and emotional reaction to loss, and was operationalized by measuring current intrusive thoughts and avoidance behaviours, as well as emotional distress over reminders of time of diagnosis. As hypothesised, mothers and fathers were grieving in relation to their child's psychiatric illness. No differences between mothers and fathers in intrusive thinking, avoidance behaviours, and distress related to recall of diagnosis were detected. With the exception of intrusive thoughts, number of contact hours with the child was not an intervening variable of mothers' and fathers' grieving.

Keywords: parents; schizophrenia; grief; gender; differences; contact; hours (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(97)00167-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:46:y:1998:i:3:p:369-379

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().