GRIEF REACTIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING OF PARENTALLY BEREAVED STUDENTS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN KISUMU CENTRAL SUB-COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

Loss, grief and bereavement are part of human experience and are natural, painful, unpredictable events of life. The loss of a parent is a potentially devastating life event that affects a child's life in many ways; it has been related to adverse health, social, psychological and educational outcomes. Therefore, this study examines grief reactions and psychological wellbeing of parentally bereaved students in public secondary schools in Kisumu Central Sub-County. The study was guided by the following objectives; to assess the grief reaction levels among parentally bereaved students, to assess the psychological wellbeing of parentally bereaved students, to determine the coping strategies used by parentally bereaved students and to explore measures that teachers take to help bereaved students in public secondary schools in Kisumu Central Sub-County. The study was anchored on attachment theory and the dual process model of coping with bereavement and adopted a mixed method sequential explanatory design. The target population was 271 parentally bereaved students and 7 guidance and counselling teachers sampled using simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques respectively. The participants completed an adapted version of Depression and Anxiety Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21), Psychological Well-Being (SPWB) and the Brief Resilient Coping Scale in the quantitative phase of the study. In the qualitative phase, 10 participants purposively selected from the first phase were interviewed. The findings revealed that the psychological wellbeing of parentally bereaved students was influenced by grief reaction components like anxiety, depression, guilty, anger and feelings of loneliness. Coping strategies like support from friends and teachers improved the psychological wellbeing of the students. The study recommends that Counselling Associations, in collaboration with school authorities and social workers to develop grief therapy program which could help to manage various grief reaction symptoms among students in order to improve on their coping strategies. Secondly, guidance and counselling teachers should constantly organize grief counselling for in-school adolescents who have lost their parents. This will help to identify their grief reactions in time and salvage the effects on their school activities.