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Family Grief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David W. Kissane  and
Sidney Bloch
David W. Kissane*
Affiliation:
Monash University Department of Psychological Medicine, Monash Medical Centre, Victoria, Australia
Sidney Bloch
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, St Vincent's Hospital, Victoria, Australia
*
∗Department of Psychological Medicine, Monash Medical Centre, 246 Clayton Road, Clayton, 3168, Victoria, Australia
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Abstract

As grief is both an individual and shared experience, adopting a systemic perspective is most appropriate for health-care professionals seeking to assist the bereaved. Within this framework, the family virtually always constitutes the most significant social group in which grief is experienced. In this paper we review the literature on family grief, covering clinical case reports, the observations of family therapists, systematic family bereavement research and family intervention studies. An understanding of patterns of family grief and vulnerability factors for morbid grief is pivotal to both preventive intervention and treatment of an established disorder.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 164 , Issue 6 , June 1994 , pp. 728 - 740
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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