Fjærestad Anita, Stige Signe Hjelen, Dyregrov Atle, Kristensen Pål
Centre for Crisis Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2025 Dec;16(1):2529743. doi: 10.1080/20008066.2025.2529743. Epub 2025 Jul 30.
After the loss of a child, bereaved parents typically experience profound grief and face an increased risk of both physical and mental health challenges. Research shows that bereaved parents need support, but there is limited knowledge on their experiences with receiving help. To explore how bereaved parents following the 2011 Utøya terror attack have experienced the help they have received. Bereaved parents ( = 22) were interviewed nine years post loss. The interview guide had questions about their experiences with grief and trauma, the impact of other life events and their experience of professional help. Interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Participants' experiences were found to represent three different pathways: (1) Receiving help, but not feeling helped, (2) Securing the help they needed and (3) Feeling left alone - mismatch between the help received and the help needed. Across all pathways, participants described helpful meetings with professionals, constructed as the cross-cutting theme: 'Seen but gently challenged'. Our findings demonstrate that bereaved parents are not a homogenous group, which emphasises the need for individualised interventions. Although most parents appear to have received some form of professional support, it was not always proactive or continuous. As a result, some parents struggled to access the right help when they needed it. Those who did manage to secure appropriate support were often those with the resources to seek it out. Although our data do not fully clarify which factors influence this disparity, it is evident that across all pathways, parents reported positive interactions with professionals. The issue, therefore, seems less about the competence of helpers and more about ensuring access to this expertise. However, the current study also reveals that some bereaved individuals lacked access to the right type of help, while others were unable to utilise the help.
在失去孩子后，痛失亲人的父母通常会经历深刻的悲痛，面临身心健康问题加剧的风险。研究表明，痛失亲人的父母需要支持，但对于他们接受帮助的经历了解有限。为了探究2011年于特岛恐怖袭击事件后痛失亲人的父母如何体验他们所得到的帮助。对22位痛失亲人的父母在失去亲人九年后进行了访谈。访谈指南包含有关他们悲伤和创伤经历、其他生活事件的影响以及他们接受专业帮助的经历的问题。采用反思性主题分析法对访谈进行了分析。参与者的经历呈现出三种不同的路径：(1) 得到了帮助，但感觉没有得到帮助；(2) 获得了他们所需的帮助；(3) 感到被忽视——所得到的帮助与所需的帮助不匹配。在所有路径中，参与者都描述了与专业人员的有益会面，这被构建为贯穿各主题的主题：“被看见但受到温和挑战”。我们的研究结果表明，痛失亲人的父母并非一个同质化的群体，这凸显了个性化干预的必要性。尽管大多数父母似乎都得到了某种形式的专业支持，但这种支持并不总是积极主动或持续不断的。因此，一些父母在需要帮助时难以获得正确的帮助。那些设法获得适当支持的人往往是有资源去寻求帮助的人。尽管我们的数据并未完全阐明哪些因素导致了这种差异，但很明显，在所有路径中，父母都报告了与专业人员的积极互动。因此，问题似乎不在于帮助者的能力，而更多地在于确保能够获得这种专业知识。然而，当前的研究还表明，一些痛失亲人的人无法获得正确类型的帮助，而另一些人则无法利用所得到的帮助。
