Oppenheim, Daniel <br/><br/>
Parents in Mourning 

 -  2011.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 20 
<br/><br/> Parents who mourn – A child’s death is one of the most painful experiences of mourning, in every country. Despite significant recent advances, help available to parents remains limited. All health care providers can provide support to mourning parents, whether or not they cared for their child. A child’s death often leaves traces in family history and its members’ future: parents, a later child, siblings, and ultimately their own children.Individual consultations or group psychotherapy can help parents to go through mourning, and bring precious knowledge of the mourning processes. Four elements are noteworthy. Parents set aside the definition of their identity as parents who have lost a child to cancer. They recognized their ambivalence: towards the intention of euthanasia and that of therapeutic obstinacy; towards doctors. They reclaimed their parental position, and recognized that they had fulfilled the expectations of their child at the end of life, and the intense mourning of siblings.Themes brought up by parents provide useful indications to health care providers in palliative situations: helping parents to preserve their social, marital, and parental identities as well as an effective presence with their child, without setting siblings aside; helping them to express their ambivalence towards the possibility of death, and to help health care providers to foster reciprocal trust with parents.