Longitudinal study of coping in mothers of children with cancer during grieving process

Although loss is a common phenomenon, dealing with it and the consequential grief, specially following the loss of children due to a complicated sickness, can be difficult and challenging. Grief is a response to the permanent loss of a loved one, particularly if it is due to their death. The griever may experience a range of feelings from deep sorrow to anger. Coming to terms with loss differs from one person to another and depends on many factors, namely the griever’s beliefs, closeness to and level of relationship between the griever and the diseased and other factors. The goal of this research was to study the coping process of mothers who had each experienced the loss of a child. Conducting descriptive research using the convenience sampling method, 19 mothers whose children had died of cancer during the second half of the year 2017 to the first half of 2018, were chosen, and to observe their reaction to the grieving process, followed up 6 times during a 12-month period. The results of this study revealed that during this one-year period with the mothers, their bodily reaction, anger, scape and feelings of guilt subsided, while search for social support, denial, rationalization and spiritual growth increased. These mothers also showed meaningful changes on the aforementioned variables in the 6 session follow ups. The findings of the current study supported that emotional coping of grieved mothers’ decreases by time.