• Donna M Zucker, Kimberly Dion, and Roxanna P McKeever.
• University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
• J Adv Nurs. 2015 Apr 1; 71 (4): 751-67.

AimTo report an analysis of the concept of grief in mothers of children with an addiction.BackgroundThe concept of grief in this context is poorly understood and often synonymously used with concepts depression, loss and chronic sorrow. In the US, the core concept grief has been recently revised by both NANDA and the DSM-V in efforts to better understand and characterize the concept. The plethora of literature on grief worldwide often characterizes grief as a response to a death.DesignConcept analysis.Data SourcesSearch terms 'parental grief' and 'substance abuse' yielded 30 articles. A second review using terms 'grief' and 'substance abuse' yielded 323 articles, in PsychInfo, CINAHL, PubMed databases from 1980-2013. Limits for articles in English and for the terms 'death' and 'child' yielded 13 usable articles.MethodsThe hybrid model of concept analysis, using a theoretical phase, an empirical phase and a final phase when a clarified definition of grief emerged.ResultsDefinitions in the literature and defining characteristics of grief outline bio-psycho-social aspects of the concept. For one mother grief was accompanied by recurring feelings of sadness across time, while for the other mother grief was seen as coping, after having passed through a variety of stages of grief. For both, grief was seen to fall on a continuum.ConclusionsGrief is a universal concept and has a trajectory. Case study data have been essential in clarifying understandings of grief as experienced by mothers of addicted children and will provide direction for meaningful and tailored interventions.© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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