Traumatic Stress in Adolescents Anticipating Parental Death
By Amy Saldinger, Ph.D., Albert C. Cain, Ph.D., and Katherine Porterfield, Ph.D
The Prevention Researcher,
Volume 12, Number 4, 2005, Pages 17-20, Item# A124-SALDINGER
This qualitative study explores the traumatic stress of a child's exposure to the graphic physical, emotional and mental deterioration of a dying parent. Interviews were conducted with a community sample of 35 surviving spouses and their parentally-bereaved school-aged children.
Traumatic stress is broadly defined to include exposure to the "fact" of impending death itself, the anxiety that comes both from knowing that one may lose a close other, and from being helpless to prevent the death.
Included, as well, is an exploration of secondary traumatic stress, defined here as the stress of watching helplessly as both the dying parent and non-ailing family members succumb to terror and anxiety about the impending death.
Emphasis is placed on a teen's unique vulnerability to traumatic stressors and on the role of parenting in mediating an adolescent's exposure to parental decline. In contrast to the anticipatory grief literature which emphasizes the advantages of forewarning in cushioning post-mortem adjustment, this study documents the adverse impact of an exposure to terminal illness.
These findings underscore the need for clinicians to attend to the traumatic stress of "ordinary" anticipated deaths, rather than maintaining an exclusive grief orientation.
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This article can be found in the issue:
Adolescents With Ill Parents
The Prevention Researcher,
Volume 12, Number 4, 2005
It has been estimated that as many as 5-15% of children and adolescents have parents who suffer from a significant medical condition. Living with an ill parent can affect youth in a number of ways, ranging from ill parents' lack of energy, to increased expectations for the adolescents, to loss of wages and famancial crisis. This issue takes a look at the lives of youth with ill parents.
This issue also featured these articles:
- Adolescent Reactions to Parental Cancer: Strategies for Providing Support, Pages 10-12
- Adolescents Coping with Non-Terminal Parental Cancer, Pages 7-9
- HIV-Affected Adolescents: Vulnerabilities and Protective Factors, Pages 13-16
- Parental Illness and Adolescent Development, Pages 3-6
- Traumatic Stress in Adolescents Anticipating Parental Death, Pages 17-20
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