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ERIC Number: EJ1234155
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Dec
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1354-4187
EISSN: N/A
A Qualitative Analysis of Psychologists' Views of Bereavement among Children with Intellectual Disability in Ireland
McClean, Katie; Guerin, Suzanne
British Journal of Learning Disabilities, v47 n4 p247-254 Dec 2019
Background: The present study investigated psychologists' views of the experience of death and bereavement among children with intellectual disabilities. Materials and Methods: Twelve psychologists with experience of working with children with intellectual disabilities (Educational = 2, Clinical = 8, and Behavioural analysts = 2; average years of experience = 24 years, SD = 10.4) completed semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis was conducted on the data. Results: The results indicated that psychologists were in favour of concrete and factual explanations of death for children with intellectual disabilities, as opposed to metaphorical or vague explanations. Psychologists reported that intellectual disability did not prevent the child from experiencing grief, but did impact their expression of grief. The challenges identified by psychologists included overcoming assumptions about the capabilities of a child with intellectual disability to understand and experience grief, enabling and encouraging families to include the child in the bereavement process. Finally, the psychologists emphasised the need to normalise grief and make it part of life. Conclusion: This study benefitted from a sample rich in relevant experience and from the rigorous process of thematic analysis. However, this project can only be considered a proxy study as there is no way to be certain the views of the psychologists actually reflect the experiences of grieving children. This is an area for further research.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Ireland
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A