Att fortsätta leva när det värsta har hänt - En undersökning om föräldrars sorg efter ett barns död

The purpose of this study was to examine parents’ grief after the loss of a child. To be more specifically the aim of the study was to find out how the parents experienced the bereavement and how they manage to keep on with their lives without their child. We also examined their experience of professional help and the help of self - help groups. We decided to use crisis theory according to Johan Cullberg. Our study was based on internet questionnaires with open questions. We chose to send the questionnaires by mail to seventeen parents´ and then they answered the questions and sent the questionnaires back to us. The parents´ lived in different parts of Sweden except for one that lived abroad. We chose different themes in the questionnaires. The themes were: the grieving process, the professional help, support groups, memorial pages and blogs. The result of our study is that parents´ experience of the grief is in general the same, but the way they have chosen to keep on with their lives differs. Some of them feel that support – groups have been a lifesaver and some feel that the family has been the most important support in the grieving process. Blogs and memorial pages have also been a big part in the grieving process. Some of the parents´ also had a negative experience when it came to the professional help they were/or were not offered