Grief in children's story books. A systematic integrative review

Abstract

Background Grieving is an adaptive process in the face of the death of somebody close. Children grieve the loss of a family member or friend and need support from their caregivers and the professionals who care for them during this process. Failure to talk to children about the death of a family member or friend can lead to prolonged grief. Children's story books are one of the resources available for providing this type of support.

Objective To provide the nursing professional with information on story books aimed at children from 7 to 11 years of age as a tool to help them understand and cope with grief.

Design A systematic integrative review was conducted.

Methods A search was performed in the ISBN database of the Ministry of Culture and the University Libraries Network. Data extraction was performed by two coders using a protocol registered in PROSPERO.

Results Fifty-six books met the inclusion criteria. Twenty-five percent of the deceased characters were grandparents and 30.4% died due to illness. The most frequent emotion was sadness, (43.3%) and the most repeated coping strategy was remembering the deceased person, (28.7%). The grieving process was depicted in 32.1% of the selected stories.

Conclusion The children's books reviewed support understanding and coping with grief. However, some limitations were detected, and therefore it is advisable to accompany the child while reading these books to discuss aspects that have not been addressed