Dual Process Model of Grief in Child Terminal Illness in Social Media

Author: Arianna Eisner

Field of Study: Psychology

Program Affiliation: Death and Grief Seminar

Faculty Mentors: Ann Merriwether

Easel: 10

Timeslot: Midday

Abstract: The dual process model of grief describes a “healthy” grief journey to be a balance between loss-oriented coping and restoration-oriented coping. People are drawn to popular culture, presenting families faced with a child’s terminal illness journey and ultimately that same family struggling with grief and bereavement. The current study is an examination of coping language used within social media pages that document a child’s terminal illness journey. An archival analysis was conducted using popular social media pages run by parents documenting their experiences with their child’s cancer journey, including posts about diagnosis all the way to posts beyond the loss of their child. Posts were coded to examine parent's usage of loss-oriented and restoration-based coping language. Results were related to current theories surrounding death anxiety, such as Terror Management Theory and other theoretical constructs.