abstract: ABSTRACT The experience of grief and loss is a process that can be extremely distressing to anyone, regardless of age. This may be especially true for youth. This study was designed and conducted to determine the effects of a therapy dog as a therapeutic adjunct in Child Life interventions with adolescents experiencing grief and loss. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The intervention consisted of 3 sessions with a Certified Child Life Specialist (CCLS) to address grief. Group 1 (N=14) was the control group, meeting only with the CCLS. Group 2 (N=13) was the experimental group and met with the CCLS with a therapy dog present during the sessions. Participants completed a pre-test and post-test of the Children's Mood Questionnaire. At the end of each session, subjects completed a Therapeutic Engagement Questionnaire. The pet therapy group experienced a significant improvement in mood scores on the Children's Mood Questionnaire following the intervention. However, there were no significant differences between groups on the Therapeutic Engagement Questionnaire during any of the 3 sessions. The data collected from this study indicate that the addition of a therapy dog in grief interventions with adolescents may improve mood outcomes. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.W. Social Work 2011

Many adolescent girls experience the death of a peer, which is often sudden and at times violent. These deaths are typically viewed as preventable, which can complicate the grief reactions of adolescent girls. The impact of peer death on adolescent girls involves a number of physical, emotional, social, and cognitive grief responses. Negative outcomes include school problems, depression, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation. This study examines the efficacy of the Adolescent Grief and Loss (AGL) group, a six-week group designed to address the needs of adolescent girls who have experienced the death of a peer within the past two years. The goal of the AGL group was to reduce or lessen physical, emotional, social, and cognitive responses to grief, and to foster mutual support and connection to others via various tasks associated with each group session. The AGL group was conducted in four different public high schools in Central Texas, with a sample size of 20 girls. A mixed methods design was utilized for this study, integrating both quantitative and qualitative research designs. The quantitative component employed a non-experimental simple time-series design, using two pre-test and three post-test time points. The qualitative component was based on a phenomenological analysis of adolescent grief and loss response, which included open-ended questions developed to capture each adolescent girl’s individual experience of peer death. Questions were also asked to elicit the girls’ experience of participating in the AGL group. The quantitative results of the study indicate that adolescent girls benefited from participation in the AGL group as evidenced by significantly reduced scores on the Loss Response List for all domains of physical, emotional, social, and cognitive grief responses. The qualitative findings yielded five overarching themes of experience of peer death: the story, physical reactions, emotional reactions, social reactions, and cognitive reactions. Integration of the quantitative and qualitative findings of this research study strongly support the benefits of providing a grief and loss group to adolescent girls who have been impacted by the experience of peer death. / text

abstract: The death of a parent or sibling for youth under age 18 is life-altering and necessitates support and opportunities for expressing grief. Scholarship from psychology and medical disciplines often equates youthful grieving as a disease to be cured rather than a natural process to be experienced. Stage-based grief models explain adults coping with loss of loved ones by working through a series of discrete phases mostly tied to deficit-based emotions such as anger or depression. Progressive grief models have been emerging throughout the past 20 years in response to stage-based models; however these models tend to highlight deficit-based emotions and are applied to youth as afterthoughts. Thus, there is a noticeable absence of research exploring positive or strength-based emotions in adolescent grief from a communicative, youth-centered perspective. A communicative approach to exploring adolescent grief narratives offers a practical yet pliable theoretical lens for interpreting meaning from mourning. Using qualitative methods, I conducted full participant research as a volunteer with Comfort Zone Camp, a national organization sponsoring weekend-long grief camps for youth. I engaged in participant observation while volunteering to explore the communicative processes of 26 grieving adolescents and also conducted post-camp follow-up interviews with youth, parents, and adult volunteers. Analysis was based on 192 field work hours, 11 interview hours, artifacts, and camp documents. Findings of the dissertation indicate grieving adolescents use communicative processes, including sharing emotional pieces, co-authoring loss, and naming hurt, to perform a range of emotions. Along with deficit-based emotions, grieving adolescents perform strength-based emotions, including confidence, forgiveness, happiness, deservingness, hope, gratitude, resilience, love, and compassion. Evidence also supports that grieving campers performed compassion individually and in groups. Theoretically, this dissertation expands on existing grief theory by demonstrating that adolescents communicate strength-based emotions in grief, captured visually in the Concert of Emotions model. This study expands on compassion theory by exploring implications of collective compassion expressions. Specifically, this dissertation offers the co-performing sub-process to account for collective compassion extending past compassion models that focus on individual expressions. Practically, this research yields new understanding into how grieving adolescents constitute themselves as compassionate, helpful contributors as they face loss. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication Studies 2015