SUDDEN LOSS, LASTING SCARS: HOW UNEXPECTED PARENTAL DEATH IMPACTS ADULT SELF-WORTH MORE DEEPLY

Abstract

The experience of losing a parent is turning out to be one of the life shaping and even traumatizing excruciating experiences that an individual may experience and it may have long lasting psychological effects on an individual up to adulthood. The study is the investigation of the complicated interrelation between the grief intensiveness, the mood disorders, and the self-esteem among the adults who had experienced the loss of their parents. 200 adult participants who could confirm their history of experiencing the parental loss participated in the research strictly in accordance with the brief grief questionnaire (BGQ) and Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSES). Besides, they all had to take part in the Parental Loss History Checklist.  These results pegged on the long-standing psychological domain of bereavement having loss of a parent and outlined the need to early interventions of grief and mood management therapies to preserve and enhance self-esteem of grieving adult population. The study contributes to a better understanding of psychopathology among adult individuals and in connection with the situation of early relational trauma and provides significant implications of the research indicating a clinical practice, in particular, in grief counseling and the mood disorder treatment.