Division of Quality and Life and Palliative Care, Department of Oncology St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee;
Division of Quality and Life and Palliative Care, Department of Oncology St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee.
Pediatrics. 2021 Apr;147(4). doi: 10.1542/peds.2020-040386. Epub 2021 Mar 1.
The death of a child is devastating, and complicated grief adversely impacts parental physical and psychosocial well-being. Most research currently is centered on bereaved mothers, and the experiences of fathers remains underexplored.
We systematically reviewed the literature to characterize the grief and bereavement experiences of fathers after the death of a child.
We searched Medline, PsycInfo, Embase, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.
Inclusion criteria encompassed English language articles published between 2007 and 2019 that evaluated the grief and bereavement experiences of fathers after the death of their child. We excluded studies describing paternal bereavement after the death of a child aged older than 21 years, stillbirth, miscarriage, or studies that did not specify age of death.
Extracted domains included study design, demographics, findings, and quality assessment.
We screened 1848 deduplicated titles and abstracts and 139 full articles, yielding 21 articles for inclusion in this analysis. Fathers often avoided discussing their grief with others, returned to work earlier, and used goal-oriented tasks as coping strategies. Intense grief reactions and posttraumatic psychological sequelae diminished over time in mothers yet persisted in fathers.
Included studies were primarily descriptive in nature, without ability to ascertain causality. Limited paternal data exists in the literature compared with maternal data.
Despite evolving gender roles, many fathers navigate loss through stoicism, self-isolation, and hard work. For some fathers, these coping mechanisms may be inadequate for navigating grief.
孩子的死亡是毁灭性的，而复杂悲痛会对父母的身心健康产生不利影响。目前大多数研究都集中在失去孩子的母亲身上，而父亲的经历仍未得到充分探索。
我们系统地回顾了文献，以描述孩子死后父亲的悲伤和丧亲经历。
我们按照系统评价和荟萃分析的首选报告项目，在 Medline、PsycInfo、Embase 和 Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature 中进行了搜索。
纳入标准包括 2007 年至 2019 年间发表的评估孩子死亡后父亲悲伤和丧亲经历的英语文章。我们排除了描述父亲在孩子死亡年龄超过 21 岁、死产、流产或未具体说明死亡年龄后的丧亲经历的研究。
提取的领域包括研究设计、人口统计学、研究结果和质量评估。
我们筛选了 1848 篇重复标题和摘要以及 139 篇全文，其中 21 篇文章被纳入本分析。父亲通常避免与他人讨论他们的悲伤，更早地返回工作岗位，并使用目标导向的任务作为应对策略。母亲的强烈悲伤反应和创伤后心理后遗症随着时间的推移而减轻，但在父亲中仍然存在。
纳入的研究主要是描述性的，无法确定因果关系。与母亲的数据相比，文献中父亲的数据有限。
尽管性别角色不断演变，但许多父亲通过坚忍、自我孤立和努力工作来应对失去。对于一些父亲来说，这些应对机制可能不足以应对悲伤。
