Goals and overview of the special issue

The loss of a loved one is an event that affects the individual, but it is as much a family affair in the sense that bereavement affects families – as well as individuals – in complex and varied ways. Yet, while there has been enormous expansion of research over the past few decades on manifestations and phenomena associated with grief and grieving of individual bereaved persons or categories of bereaved persons, research at the family level has lagged behind. With a few valuable exceptions, the available research in the latter domain has also appeared in diverse sources, scattered across different disciplines, and is thus difficult to synthesize for the interested reader. This suggests the need for synthesis and review of research on bereavement in the family context. There are a number of reasons why we think that a family perspective is important. In addition to the fact that death of a loved one is in itself an interpersonal event, one which affects individuals who live in a social context, the actual grieving process too incorporates important interpersonal components: People do not typically grieve alone; each member of a family is affected (in different ways) by the loss of one of its members, and these persons interact with each other in the process of coming to terms with their loss. Family and individual processes can be expected to interact in intricate ways. For example, it is understood that family dynamics (e.g. conflicted relationships to other surviving family members and to the deceased) affects the course of each person’s adjustment to their loss, while at the same time, the individual reaction of a family member may have ramifications that are experienced throughout the family, affecting dynamics at this interpersonal level too. Also, there are interpersonal as well as intrapersonal consequences associated with bereavement: for example, not only are there individual outcomes relating to mental