Children and Grief »

Bio updated 9/01 for paperback release

J. William Worden, PhD, ABPP, holds academic appointments at Harvard Medical School and the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology in California. He is also Co-Principal Investigator of the Harvard Child Bereavement Study, based at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His clinical practice is in Newport Beach, California.

Drawing upon extensive interviews and assessments of school-age children who have lost a parent to death, this book offers a richly textured portrait of the mourning process in children. The volume presents major findings from the Child Bereavement Study and places them in the context of previous research, shedding new light on both the wide range of normal variation in children's experience of grief and the factors that put bereaved children at risk. The book also compares parentally bereaved children with those who have suffered loss of a sibling to death, or of a parent through divorce, exploring similarities and differences in these experiences of loss. A concluding section explores the clinical implications of the findings and includes a review of intervention models and activities, as well as a screening instrument designed to help identify high-risk bereaved children.

Jonathan Sherman

This book presents the findings of The Child Bereavement Study; the author is the principal investigator. Children (ages 6-17) from 70 families were studied for two years immediately following the loss of a parent. The book's first section describes the findings regarding childhood response to parent loss and the factors that place some children at higher risk for ongoing emotional and behavioral problems. A middle section compares parent loss to other situations like sibling death and divorce. The final section discusses detection, prevention, and treatment issues for this population. The purpose is to add research information to the current understanding of childhood grief and adjustment to the loss. This is very valuable because much of the study of childhood parent loss has been more theoretical and anecdotal in nature. The research methodology was very strong, and the author is a highly respected expert regarding the grief process. Child therapists will find useful the range of clinical information covered as well as the treatment recommendations. Additionally, specialists in child development will find this a worthy contribution to the field. This book includes extensive and pertinent references as well as unique features like a summary of main points at the end of every chapter, separate author and subject indexes, and a suggested reading list. This book raises the standards of research in the area of childhood grief and, as such, is likely to be very influential in the field. The prospective, longitudinal nature of the study, with its attention to an extensive range of areas of parent and child functioning, makes the findings persuasive, rich in detail, and exceptionallyuseful from the standpoint of detection, prevention, and treatment of childhood maladjustment after parent loss.