Child mortality and parental grief: An evolutionary analysis

Hurricane-Force Grief: A Mirror of Fathers' Love

A child's death is a traumatic experience that profoundly impacts parents' psychological, physical, and social wellbeing. The literature describes gender differences in grief response associated with child loss, yet less is known about fathers' grief in comparison that of mothers due to fathers' underrepresentation in bereavement research. There is a need for scholarly exploration to advance understanding of fathers' grief. This article presents selected findings on fathers' grief responses that emerged from a larger qualitative study, which aimed to describe fathers' lived experience of bereavement after a child's death. Profound grief emerged as one essential theme of fathers' bereavement experience. Participants described the meaning of their grief, their multidimensional grief responses, their grief triggers, and their grief intensity. Findings deepen understanding of fathers' grief associated with child loss and advance the body of parental bereavement literature.

The role of developmental caregiving programming in modulating our affiliation tendency and the vulnerability to social anxiety and eating disorders

Attachment is the evolutionarily-established process through which humans create bonds with others to receive care from them. The phenomenon is as essential to our physical survival as it is to our psychological development. An increasing number of studies demonstrates that in sensitive periods during the early years of life, our brain circuitry is programmed in the interactions with our caregivers, with the imprinting of information over multiple attachment dimensions. Adopting a basic brain-computer analogy, we can think of this knowledge as the psycho-social firmware of our mind. According to a recently proposed extension of the classical three-dimensional view, one attachment dimension - somaticity - concerns the caregiver's task of reflecting and confirming the child's (internal) states - such as sensations, emotions, and representations - to support the child's ability to identify and define those entities autonomously. Relying on multidisciplinary evidence - from neuroscientific, developmental, evolutionary, and clinical sources - we suggest that somaticity (H1) has the adaptive function to modulate our tendency to comply and affiliate with a reference group but also (H2) increases the vulnerability to developing Social Anxiety (SA) and Eating Disorders (EDs). We evaluate H1-H2, (1) indicating the evolutionary role of somaticity in modulating our affiliation tendency to optimize the ancestral threat-opportunity balance coming from infectious diseases and (2) showing the deep connection between SA-EDs and the features most closely related to somaticity - interoception and parenting style. Finally, we discuss three relevant implications of H1-H2: (A) Bringing into research focus the adaptive role of our firmware knowledge system versus the hardware (neural substrate) and software (higher cognition) ones. (B) Complementing the well-grounded Objectification and Allocentric Lock Theories, allowing us to integrate multiple levels of explanation on the etiology of psychopathology. (C) Suggesting the design of new psychological treatments. While not aiming to prove H1-H2, our analysis supports them and encourages their direct testing.

Complicated Grief Following the Traumatic Loss of a Child: A Systematic Review

Complicated grief is a disabling condition that occurs when the natural grief process is disturbed or prolonged. Research demonstrates that complicated grief is more prevalent following the sudden or violent loss of a child. Despite the high incidence of accidental death worldwide, little research has focused on parental grief trajectories following this form of traumatic loss. A systematic review was conducted to explore parental bereavement outcomes following accidental death. Studies were included if they specifically examined complicated grief in parents bereaved by the accidental death of their child. A total of 767 articles were identified and seven studies met the eligibility criteria for review. Poorer outcomes were identified in relation to the mode of death, relationship type, time post-loss, perceived support, perceived justice and comorbidities. Results of the current study may be used to inform the development of clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of complicated grief.