Doświadczenie śmierci dziecka jako sytuacja graniczna

The death of a child is one of the most difficult and painful experiences in an adult person’s life. Statistics reveal the terrifying frequency of this phenomenon. Several thousand children and young adults die every year as a result of diseases, accidents, homicide and suicides. Unfortunately, despite the universality of this experience, a child’s death is still a socially tabooed phenomenon. Depending on the type of loss, there are various difficulties for mothers and fathers with experiencing mourning. Lonely parents may be more likely to experience mental and somatic health problems, such as severe depression (Sanders, 1989), physical exhaustion (Rando, 1986), insomnia (Bowlby, 1980), dissociative disorders, or somatoform disorders (Łuszczyńska, 2011). Even a permanent change in personality being a result of complications in the course of mourning is a possible outcome. It was also noted that grieving parents often have tight and dysphoric affect associated with the experience of helplessness in the face of a loss. Felt anger is directed not only to the immediate environment, but above all to the grieving parents themselves, as a result of the growing sense of guilt (Johnson, 1987). The paper presents results of a study on the problems of a child’s death and the difficulties of parents in coping with the loss, which affects both the family and the society.