Adjustment Mechanisms of Adolescent Girls to the Father's loss

Loss of parents in childhood and adolescence is an important stressful event. It seems that the child or adolescent should adjust to it, in several ways, to cope with the therefrom stresses and psychological damages. The aim of this study was to identify adjustment mechanisms of adolescent girls to the father loss in Tabriz. The approache of the research was qualitative and the method was descriptive phenomenology. The context of the research was teenage girls (15-19 years old) of Tabriz city; who had lost their father due to illness in childhood and many years had passed since their father's death. Purposeful sampling continued until data saturation and finally 7 people were selected. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was done by Collizzi method. The findings of this research included 3 main categories and 6 subcategories. The adjustment mechanisms of girls with the absence of a father in Tabriz included self-control (thought management, emotion management), coping (social coping, economic coping) and growth (managing, growth). Most of the participants, based on their individual characteristics, receiving support from the survivors and having suitable conditions, effectively adjusted to the loss and the resulting conditions, and some others showed incompatibility with the conditions due to many reasons.