ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1749-6030

Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Philosophy (Ph.D)

First Advisor

William Chaplin

Second Advisor

Elissa J. Brown

Third Advisor

Robin Goodman

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, children and adolescents face a greater need than ever for effective mental healthcare to address distressing and disabling emotional and behavioral reactions that can occur following the death of a significant person in their lives. However, current evaluations of grief-focused interventions for bereaved youth are limited by a lack of consensus regarding how to define and measure grief symptoms in children and adolescents, a lack of clarity regarding grief-specific effects compared with effects on other forms of psychopathology, and limited power to detect moderators of intervention effect. The present meta-analysis evaluated the pooled effects of grief-focused interventions for bereaved youth due to any cause on symptoms of grief, PTSD, depression, functional impairment, and behavior problems. Moderation effects for select study characteristics, measurement characteristics, intervention characteristics, and participant characteristics were also evaluated. The meta-analysis included 32 studies with a total of 3,412 participants. Significant moderate pooled effect sizes were found for reductions in symptoms of grief, PTSD, depression, functional impairment, and behavior problems. Hypotheses regarding moderator effects were partially supported, wherein studies employing a comparison group and those that implemented minimum symptom cutoffs demonstrating greater effect sizes than studies that did not. Amount of caregiver involvement and individual therapy modality were associated with significantly greater effect sizes for grief symptom reductions, but not for other forms of psychopathology. Implications regarding the uniformity of effect sizes across symptom domains and moderation effects are discussed, as are limitations of the current meta-analysis and the broader child and adolescent grief-focused literature base.

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