Explain three influences on adolescents' experiences of grief.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Adolescents' advancing cognitive abilities and their emerging sense of self influence how they grieve. Adolescents who lose their parents tend to feel intense loss, isolation, and the sense that the parent is irreplaceable and that loss cannot be overcome. Adolescents may be plagued by a strong sense that life is unfair. They are at risk to suffer social and interpersonal difficulties in adjustment, including internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression, yet often show a strong desire for others to include them and take interest in them. Many feel a strong presence of the deceased in dreams and in daily life, which can offer a sense of comfort and support. Adolescents tend to have mature conceptions about death, but their experience of grief is often influenced by their ability to understand and manage their emotions as well as their experience of egocentric thought. The existence of the personal fable may lead them to view their grief as unique and incomprehensible-that others could not understand and certainly do not feel the way they do.