Sibling death, adolescent bereavement, and religion

Abstract The growing body of scholarship on adolescent bereavement has overlooked on the whole the role of religion for grieving adolescents. In this investigation, I studied the impact that attitudes toward religion have upon the grief reactions of teenagers bereaved over a sibling's death. The phenomenon of adolescent grief is placed in the context of the cognitive, moral, and psychosocial changes occurring in teenagers' lives. The sample comprised 42 adolescents, evenly divided between older (17-19-year range) and younger (14-16-year range) individuals; over 60% of the sample were female. Grief reactions investigated included (a) emotions such as shock, confusion, anger, relief, guilt, fear, loneliness, and depression; (b) persistent thinking about the dead sibling; (c) opinions whether initial grief reactions would subside; and (d) whether and in what direction the intensity of the feelings changed. Grief reactions discriminated adolescents grouped in terms of several attitudes toward religion: whether religion (a) had been important before the sibling's death; (b) currently held importance in the adolescent's life; (c) provided a source of help to deal with the death; (d) is difficult to believe; and (e) was considered valuable overall. In discussing results, I note that religious belief did not make coping necessarily any easier for teenagers, and that the increased importance of religion in the lives of many of the adolescents could indicate a development facilitated by mourning. Some ideas for further research are presented.