Investigation on Experienced losses in the life story of young people living in Tehran: a phenomenological study

Although loss is a common shared experience among human beings, the broad variety of loss and different meaning people give it, makes its definition a challenging problem for researchers and psychotherapists who work with this phenomenon. In the present study, based on a qualitative and phenomenological approach, the definition and meanings of loss and the variety of experienced losses were examined in a sample of young people who live in Tehran. The sample consisted of 13 people who attended two focused groups and 8 people who were deep-interviewed individually. All sessions were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using Interpretive phenomenological analysis. Results revealed that young people’s definition of loss could be categorized in three major groups: losing something and/or someone that we had, emotional consequences of loss and losing the desired object. In addition, a variety of personal and interpersonal loss experiences such as death of a close person, family, romantic or friendship losses, economical losses, health-related losses and losses regarding to mental concepts were identified. Compared to the previous literature, the present study shows that losses have an even wider range and are strongly related to the culture and life experiences of the people who narrate them. The implications of these results has been discussed and suggestions for further research has been provided. it is essential that future research investigate the response to individual and social loss in terms of their similarity to the common reactions in grief.