Do online support groups for grief benefit the bereaved? Systematic review of the quantitative and qualitative literature

an article by Ceit Robinson and Dr Rachael Pond (Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand) published in Computers in Human Behavior Volume 100 (November 2019)

Highlights

• Quantitative studies about therapeutic benefits are limited and findings are mixed.
• Qualitative studies find many positive attributes of online support groups for users.
• Users' experiences of grief understood, accepted, and normalised.
• An emotionally supportive space where grief can be openly expressed any time.
• Occasional distress when reading others' messages - but overall benefits prevail.

Abstract

The present systematic review is the first to examine the quantitative and qualitative evidence about the potential usefulness of online peer support groups for bereaved persons. It aimed to determine: whether online support groups reduce grief-related symptoms for persons who are grieving; and the positive and negative attributes of online support groups experienced by bereaved users of these groups.

A comprehensive search within major article databases and Google Scholar, and hand searching of reference lists in retrieved articles, resulted in nine peer-reviewed, scholarly studies that met the inclusion criteria. These quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies were assessed using the MMAT quality appraisal tool, and their findings were critically synthesised using a narrative and thematic approach.

Insufficient, high-quality quantitative research prevented conclusions being drawn about the effect of online support groups on grief-related symptoms.

However, the qualitative evidence shows that there are clear positive attributes of online peer support that are valued by bereaved users.

These include being part of an understanding community of persons who have experienced a similar loss, emotional support, sharing of information, remembrance, reconstruction of a sense of identity, and a realisation of the changing nature of grief over time.

Until there is evidence of therapeutic effects, it seems that online support groups may be a useful adjunct to, but not alternative to, grief therapy or counselling.

Recommendations for much needed research are given.

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It's a Myth That We Can Just "Get Over" Pain and Loss

a post by Claire Rother for the Tiny Buddha blog



“There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human—in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.”
C. JoyBell C.

“I just feel like it’s never ending… like I should be more over it by now,” my friend says, her eyes looking down at her mug of tea. She lost a loved one three years ago in tragic circumstances.

Her words make me sad, and there are layers to my sadness: I’m sad for her loss, her grief, for the difficulty she faces daily as she continues her life without this person. Also, I’m saddened by her belief about her suffering; that it’s somehow not okay or normal to still be so sad.

This is not a woman in ruins. She has a good life. A job she loves, a beautiful home, and family. She’s a wonderful mother to her children. But she is deeply sad. She carries this sadness around with her everywhere she goes—on the train to work, on the sofa while she watches Netflix, out to dinner.

Her sadness is heavy, yet she carries it with a grace that belies its weight. It’s not ruining her. Yet it’s there, like a psychological shadow, even in her happier moments.

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A very inspiring piece of writing.

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Those 5 Stages of Grief: Does Mourning Really Unfold Like That?

a post by Bella DePaulo for the World of Psychology blog



Sometimes a psychological phenomenon becomes so well-known that even people with no training whatsoever in psychology are familiar with it. That’s true for the five stages of grief, as described by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross back in 1969. When someone dies, she suggested, the first reaction of the loved ones left behind is denial. Anger comes next, then bargaining, then depression. Finally, after all those stages have passed, mourners experience some acceptance of their loss.

Originally, Kubler-Ross formulated the stages of grief to describe the reactions of patients who had terminal illnesses. But she never conducted a systematic study of people’s reactions to the death of a loved one, and whether those reactions change over time in the way she predicted. Over the years, researchers have stepped in to try to see whether Kubler-Ross was right.

They found that, with regard to the order in which various reactions peak over time, Kubler-Ross was spot on. She was wrong, though, about the frequency with which the bereaved experience different emotions. The most important conclusion of research on stages of grief, though, is that there is no one way to grieve. Different people mourn in different ways. Their stages may be different than the ones Kubler-Ross described, or they may not go through different stages at all.

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Grief Isn't Something You Live Through, It's Something You Live With

a post by Ellie Batchiyska for the Tiny Buddha blog

“Obstacles do not block the path, they are the path.” ~Zen proverb

I thought the concept of a “cold sweat” was unreal and paradoxical until the evening of August 27, 2014. That was my first cold sweat. My first of a lot of things.

My heart jack-hammered in my chest.

I heard my pulse in my ears.

I gasped for air on my dorm room floor in New York, while my mom tried to calm me down on the other end of the phone in Los Angeles.

“It’s just a panic attack, sweetie. Just breathe deep.”

No, no, no, I thought. Panic couldn’t possibly evoke this kind of physiological response. My arm hurt, my chest hurt. Was it possible to have a heart attack at age nineteen?

I didn’t sleep for days after that. I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up again.

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I wish I had heard about living with it rather than through it when *my* father was killed in a road traffic accident. It has taken me a very long time to get to the point where I can accept that the feeling of loss will be with me until I die but that I *can* live with it.

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Moving Through Grief: I'm Strong Because I Feel It All

a post by Megan Seamans for the Tiny Buddha blog

“Grief is the last act of love we have to give to those we loved. Where there is deep grief,   
there was great love.” ~Unknown

It’s been almost six months now. Half of a year without my brother and the grief still visits. I’m pretty sure grief doesn’t actually go away, it just gets further and further apart.

People continue to ask me how I am so “strong” through all of this, mistaking my happy moments as the full picture.

I continue to tell them strength comes because I feel it all.

The story in itself is my therapy, my chance to relive the amazing memories, my chance to show you the waves of grief I ride.

The last thing I told my conscious brother was, “But I believe in miracles, I really do.”

To be fair, the last thing I really told him was a travel story about me using a squatty-potty in Thailand, in hopes that humor would bring him back to responsiveness.

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How to Grieve for Online Friends You Had Never Met in Person

an article by Cindy Lamothe published in the New York Times [via ResearchBuzz: Firehose with grateful thanks]


When Kristi Pahr learned that a friend she had known only online had died, she felt that others didn't take the loss as seriously as if it had been a friend she knew in person.CreditCreditGillian Photography

Last November, Kristi Pahr felt both shock and denial after learning that her online friend of over four years, Amy, had died suddenly. She says she still cries remembering those initial days of grief. Amy, she said, “was a better, more ‘real’ friend to me than most people I know in person.”

Ms. Pahr, 41, a freelance writer from South Carolina, first met Amy through mutual friends in an online Star Wars game back in 2013. She fondly recalls a similar “geekiness” and love of fantasy novels quickly bonded the two. “We chatted every day, shared pictures of our kids,” complained about their spouses. And though she and Amy knew each other only virtually, their daily texts evolved into years of mutual support and understanding. “She encouraged me to start submitting my writing for publication,” Ms. Pahr said, “and was one of the only people I ever let read the things I wrote before I was published.”

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Religion is about emotion regulation, and it’s very good at it

a post by Stephen T Asma for the Big Think blog

Religion does not help us to explain nature. It did what it could in pre-scientific times, but that job was properly unseated by science. Most religious laypeople and even clergy agree: Pope John Paul II declared in 1996 that evolution is a fact and Catholics should get over it. No doubt some extreme anti-scientific thinking lives on in such places as Ken Ham's Creation Museum in Kentucky, but it has become a fringe position. Most mainstream religious people accept a version of Galileo's division of labour: 'The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.'

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How Journaling Helped Me Heal from Grief and How It Can Help You Too

a post by Kerstin Pilz for the Tiny Buddha blog


“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The day I was told that the man I loved was going to die from cancer, I did two things: I made a pact with myself never to have more than one bottle of wine in the house. I knew the risks of numbing pain and I knew that it didn’t work. Then I went to a stationery shop and bought a supply of fine moleskin journals.

My journey through grief started the day the pea-sized lump behind my husband’s ear was given a name. Metastatic melanoma. Over the course of two years it spread to his lungs, then his brain. A brain tumor the size of a golf ball is what killed him.

Four weeks after his death, a tightly sealed plastic box containing a dozen diaries was the first thing I grabbed when I had to evacuate my home ahead of a monster cyclone. Seven years after those events, the plastic container, which by now contains several dozen moleskins, is still the first thing I’ll grab at the next cyclone warning.

Why? Because those journals were my lifesaver at a time when no therapist could help me. Grieving is a very long and lonely journey, and those journals were my most intimate, trusted friends during the most difficult time in my life.

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The Little Things in Life Are the Ones That Matter Most

a post by Linda Broder for the Tiny Buddha blog


“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” ~Muhammad Ali

TRIGGER WARNING – loss of a child
I personally found it strangely comforting.

I followed a little boy in Walmart today. He didn’t look like my son and yet I trailed him and his mother all over the store. I curled my fingers around the shopping cart so I wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch him.

He didn’t walk with Brendan’s bounce or jerk his head back, trying to slide his glasses back onto his nose. He didn’t have his sarcastic smile or those tiny freckles scattered across his cheeks.

But he had the same cowlick sprouting from the back of his head. I wheeled my cart around and followed this little boy who looked nothing like my son. I itched to brush this boy’s hair, just like I did before Brendan grew too old and wiggled away.

I used to smooth his spikes down and then laugh when they sprang back up, no matter how much gel I used. By the time he became a teenager, he gave up trying to tame them and left it messy and wild.

And now, I’ll never get a chance to touch his hair again. My son died in an accident a week before his first day of high school.

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No surprise to those who’ve been there: Losing a pet can hurt more than losing a fellow human

a post by Brandon A. Weber for the Big Think blog



There are a number of reasons the death of a pet is as hard as – or sometimes, even worse than – losing a human.

Pets are increasingly such close family members because we spend every day, sometimes all day, with them and, especially in their later years, we are the caregivers and providers. And they are frequently our alarm clocks, as well.

Much of the time, it’s the first experience we have with a close death; even children who grow up with pets will likely see them pass before they go off to college.

Grieving for a family member or friend is socially acceptable, and people generally don’t tell us to “just get over it” or offer to find a new substitute like they do with pets.

Euthanasia is usually the end-of-life choice for older pets, and that’s also something outside the “normal” human experience, because that just isn’t done with humans.

There’s also the ‘love hormone’ known as oxytocin, which is released when humans stare into each other’s eyes, or when parents look at their children. A 2015 study found that dogs and humans both experience increased oxytocin levels when they look into each others eyes.

“I’m sure if you did the study with other animals it would be the same,” says Cori Bussolari, a psychologist at the University of San Francisco, reasoned.

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8 Ways to Support Yourself Through Bereavement

a post by Julia Samuel for the World of Psychology blog

As we age we are inevitably bereaved more often, and it is at a time of our life when we are more vulnerable. Research shows that the generation that are in their 60’s and older are the least likely to access or receive appropriate support when someone dies, and this is particularly true of men.

Through my work as a bereavement psychotherapist for the last 25 years, I have learned from my clients what can help them at such a difficult time, and I have developed the concept of “pillars of strength” – these are active things we can do to help us manage the pain of loss, and build an internal structure when we feel there is a terrible black hole inside us.

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Hazel’s comment
As the eldest person in my immediate family I have been through the loss of those older than me. Now I'm having to cope with friends around my own age (only 74) dying as well as the loss of those younger. It is still a struggle to get through the grieving process.

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Healthy Ways to Navigate Your Grief

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog



Even though my dad was hooked up to the most high-tech ventilator in the hospital and had five chest tubes connected to his body, I thought he’d come home with us. Sure, the recovery wouldn’t be easy, but we’d take it slow, and eventually, he’d return to his healthy, energetic self.

At his funeral, I really wanted to say something, to make everyone there understand just how kind-hearted, funny, playful, brave, and resilient my father was. This was a special person, and I yearned, a yearning that knotted my stomach, for others to feel that. Instead, I stayed silent as the rabbi read through paragraphs we’d provided, paragraphs that barely captured the beauty of my dad.

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What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Who’s Grieving

a post by Linda Carroll for the Tiny Buddha blog



“Remember that there is no magic wand that can take away the pain and grief. The best any of us can do is to be there and be supportive.” ~Marilyn Mendoza

My mother, an articulate and highly accomplished writer, began to lose much of what she valued a few years ago. Her eyesight was compromised by macular degeneration, her hallmark youthful vigor was replaced with exhaustion, and many of her friends began to die. Finally, and cruelest of all, her memory began to go, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.

Her struggle and her suffering in the last two years of life were excruciating to watch, and I was helpless to stop what felt like an avalanche of cruel losses.

Sometimes in that last year, she would call me several times a day with distress and confusion. When she finally died, after five ambulance trips to the hospital in six weeks, my first response was thankfulness that she was out of the struggle and, to my surprise, relief. I had been grieving the mother I had known for the last year of her life, and she had already been gone a long time.

It would be another month before I found my grief, and I suspect that it will be there forever; but my immediate feeling was not sadness.

Continue reading as Linda shares the comments she found helpful, and, perhaps more importantly, those that she did not.

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Surprising Losses that Need to Be Grieved

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog



We think that the only time we grieve is when a loved one passes away. But it’s important to grieve all sorts of losses. Moving. Graduating. Retiring. Ending a relationship (even if you’re the one who ended it). Being diagnosed with an illness. Recovering from that illness. Starting a new job or even being promoted.

In short, a loss can be anything, negative or positive. As marriage and family therapist Cheryl Beatrice said, “If we can be connected to it – whatever ‘it’ is – then we can grieve its loss.”

One loss also can spark secondary losses – a kind of domino effect of losses. For instance, you’re getting a divorce. It was your idea. It was something you’ve been wanting for a long time. But when it finally happens, you feel the heavy weight of sadness on your shoulders.

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 I have read through this a couple of times and realised the ripples that moved through my life after my dog died of cancer last year. I’m over it now and there is now a new dog in the house but I have learned to recognise why I curled up and gave in to many of my insecurities.

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