Background: Drug-death bereavement is an understudied topic. We explore what bereaved parents experience after losing their child to drug use. The aim of the paper is to provide knowledge about what drug-death bereaved parents go through and study the kinds of help and support they receive. Method: Reflexive thematic analysis is used to analyze 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Norwegian parents. Results: We generated four main themes: (I) 'constant preparedness' describes the burdensome overload that the parents experienced before death; (II) 'stigmatization' represents public and self-induced stigma; (III) 'emotional overload' refers to the parents' complex and ambivalent emotions, such as anger, guilt and shock after the loss; and (IV) 'complex relations' describes the parents' relations with public services and their personal social networks. Discussion: We discuss how overload, before and after the loss experience, causes a special grief. How this overload, silence from helpers, self-stigma and complicated interactions with social networks contribute to the grief of these parents is also discussed. Potential implications for policy and practice are subsequently outlined.

BackgroundNumerous studies have documented a profound reduction in alcohol use among pregnant women, whereas research on expectant fathers has been scarce. The aim of this study was to measure changes in alcohol consumption from before pregnancy to 17 weeks in gestation for mothers and fathers, differentiating between parents with and without any previous children, and to measure how level and change in alcohol consumption into early pregnancy was associated with relationship satisfaction.MethodsThe data collection was conducted as part of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. This cohort now includes 108 000 children, 90 700 mothers and 71 500 fathers recruited from 1999 to 2008. The present study comprises 82 362 couples. Alcohol consumption was assessed using a questionnaire including items about usual drinking frequency, quantities, and number of occasions with heavy episodic drinking (HED). Relationship satisfaction was measured by five items scored on a Likert agreement scale.ResultsThe findings indicate that both mothers and fathers reduce their drinking significantly during pregnancy. Reduction was apparent for all three measures of alcohol consumption. First-time fathers reduced their alcohol consumption more than experienced fathers, from initially higher levels. The gap between the fathers and their pregnant partner was greater for first-time parents compared to parents with previous children. Drinking pre-pregnancy and relationship satisfaction during pregnancy were weakly related within each partner, whereas no association across partners was observed.ConclusionsBoth expectant mothers and fathers changed their alcohol consumption patterns when expecting a child. Almost all mothers stopped drinking, whereas fathers reduced their drinking to a considerable degree. Relationship satisfaction was only slightly related to their drinking patterns. The findings may have important policy implications, mainly with regard to developing alcohol preventive strategies.

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This study aims to broaden our knowledge of how professionals in municipal health and welfare relate to bereaved persons during the acute phase of a drug-related death. A reflexive thematic analysis was applied to six focus group interviews with 27 first responding personnel in Norway. The article describes the complexity and simultaneousness of the professional response. Three main themes were identified: (a) establishing contact, (b) diverse, supportive assistance, and (c) a complex helping context. The analysis showed that experiences from previous encounters and the deceased’s illicit drug use affected many of the professionals’ assessments, and implied an evaluation of the bereaved as not in need of emergency services or psychosocial follow-up. Professionals should be trained to understand drug-related death as a sudden and unnatural death, and to initiate immediate psychosocial crisis intervention. There is a need for further research on the perspective of professionals in the health and welfare services on the drivers and barriers to support (bereaved persons) during the acute phase.

This study assessed the effect of prepregnancy level of alcohol use among mothers on relationship breakups with young children at 36 months after birth and the extent to which relationship satisfaction (RS) throughout the postpartum period could mediate any association between alcohol use and divorce. The data were part of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, and analyses of the present article were based on a total of 69,117 mothers divided into low-, medium-, and high-risk consumption groups. All the three groups experienced a decrease in RS, but the largest effect was observed for the high-risk group. Mothers in this group had 55% higher odds for divorce as compared to the low-risk group. The findings supported a conceptual model whereby the effects of alcohol use on divorce were mediated through lowered RS.