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Grief Reactions in Children and Adolescents

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Book cover Clinical Handbook of Bereavement and Grief Reactions

Part of the book series: Current Clinical Psychiatry ((CCPSY))

Abstract

The death of a loved one is among the most common and stressful events that a child or an adolescent can experience. In the Western world, an estimated 4% of children and adolescents experience the death of a parent by the age of 16. Although normative and complicated grief reactions have been studied primarily in adults, difficult and disturbed patterns of grief in children have received increasing recognition. This disorder is most commonly known as complicated grief; alternatively, it may be referred to as prolonged grief disorder, traumatic grief, or pathological grief. Losing a loved one in childhood or adolescence is associated with not only mental suffering and psychiatric disorders, but also negative outcomes in terms of longitudinal development and global level of functioning. It is important to take children’s developmental phases into account to understand and clinically describe grief reactions. While the number of studies focusing on these specificities is increasing, much remains to be done.

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Service Universitaire de Psychiatrie de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent, CHU de Toulouse, Toulouse, France

    Alexis Revet M.D. & Jean-Philippe Raynaud M.D.

  2. Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France

    Alexis Revet M.D. & Jean-Philippe Raynaud M.D.

  3. Home Base, a Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Program, Boston, MA, USA

    Lauren Laifer B.A.

Authors
  1. Alexis Revet M.D.
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  2. Lauren Laifer B.A.
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  3. Jean-Philippe Raynaud M.D.
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Correspondence to Alexis Revet M.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Massachussetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Eric Bui

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Revet, A., Laifer, L., Raynaud, JP. (2018). Grief Reactions in Children and Adolescents. In: Bui, E. (eds) Clinical Handbook of Bereavement and Grief Reactions . Current Clinical Psychiatry. Humana Press, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65241-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65241-2_4

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65240-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65241-2

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