ABSTRACT
While grief is challenging at any age, it can be particularly difficult for children and adolescents, who often lack both the cognitive and emotional skills that are helpful in loss resolution. With a necessary focus on the developmental tasks of maturation, youth can be thrown off course by the physical and affective demands of the grief process. An additional complication results when adults expect that the grief experience for youth is the same as their own, and therefore do not provide the safety and support children and adolescents need to help them through the process. This chapter will review young people’s cognitive understanding of death from a developmental perspective and outline specific tasks and needs of youth in the grieving process, which are essential knowledge for the design of interventions to assist them in their adaptation to loss. The rationale for the choice of groups as an intervention modality will be explained, with two case examples demonstrating the way in which theory is incorporated into practice.
