The Endless Grief in Waiting: A Qualitative Study of the Relationship between Ambiguous Loss and Anticipatory Mourning amongst the Relatives of Missing Persons in Italy

Abstract

<jats:p>This article presents the results of a qualitative study aiming to consider the relationship between ambiguous loss and anticipatory mourning amongst relatives of missing people in Italy. Eight people participated in the research, narrating their experiences of losing a beloved person (one found alive, three found dead, and four still missing). Findings suggest the presence of a particular form of ambiguous loss, characterised by traits typical of both prolonged and traumatic grief. These findings describe how families are faced with an emotional vortex related to a never-ending wait, and how the mourning is solved only when the missing person is found dead or alive. The discovery of a corpse is traumatic but it allows mourners to fully recognise their grief. When a person is found, it changes the relationship in a positive way. When neither of these events happen, mourners have two different kinds of reactions: they experience either a prolonged grief or a drive to solve their suffering by helping other people (post-traumatic growth). In this study, it is highlighted how a community can be useful or detrimental in this process, and the importance of psychological and social support to prevent significant clinical outcomes is stressed.</jats:p>

The COVID-19 Disappeared: From Traumatic to Ambiguous Loss and the Role of the Internet for the Bereaved in Italy

“…Some studies have in fact described on the one hand how important it is to have direct contact with the corpse for the closure of mourning, because the contact with the corpse and funeral rituals facilitate the work of mourning (39). By contrast, the imposed lack of contact with the corpse of the deceased may lead to derealization and estrangement that impedes the mourning process (40). Thus, the mourning may be prolonged because of the ambiguity generated by a situation of "unreality."…”

Catharsis Through Cinema: An Italian Qualitative Study on Watching Tragedies to Mitigate the Fear of COVID-19

“…The analysis proceeded through six main phases: engaging in preparatory organization; reading the texts deeply; coding data; interpreting themes; searching for alternative explanations; and producing the final report ( 36 ). The process was performed by highlighting some recurrent words or concepts that appeared to be particularly meaningful for a participant (since during the interview participants had repeated them often or had given emphasis to them), and by subsequently confronting these elements with the ones that could be found in the other participants' narrations, and subsequently grouping together into broader thematic categories the elements that appeared to be shared the most among the participants ( 37 ). The analysis was performed with the software Atlas.ti ( 38 ), which allows researchers to directly work on written texts, highlighting portions of them (which become “quotations,” that is, parts of the direct speech of each participant that are particularly meaningful) creating labels to insert in each text that can adequately represent its fundamental themes, and elaborating broader clusters of meaning comparing the data gained from each text.…”

A Challenge for Palliative Psychology: Freedom of Choice at the End of Life among the Attitudes of Physicians and Nurses

“…The qualitative data obtained from the open-ended questions of the questionnaire, that is, the participants’ answers to those questions, were transcribed verbatim into a text file (one for each participant) and analyzed using thematic analysis, which allowed texts to be examined in terms of their principal contents [ 53 ]. The process was performed through the software for qualitative analysis Atlas.it [ 54 ], following six main phases: engaging in preparatory organization; reading the texts deeply; coding data; interpreting themes; searching for alternative explanations; and producing the final report [ 55 ]. This allowed recurrent concepts that appeared to be particularly meaningful for a participant in every text to be highlighted and to be confronted with those that could be found in other participants’ narrations so that the elements that were shared the most were then grouped together to form some broader thematic categories (the ones that will be presented in the dedicated subsection in the Results) [ 55 ].…”