Wendy Lichtenthal
University of Miami, FL·Psychology
The death of a child is widely seen as the most devastating loss a person can experience. Bereaved parents face higher risks of prolonged grief, depression, reduced quality of life, cardiovascular disease, dementia and early death.
- Fields
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
bereavement
grief
death of a child
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2027
What they work on
- Quantify how bereaved parents' social networks change after a child's death, including negative interactions, emotional support, social integration, shared purpose, and network size and composition, through a survey of about 300 parents.
- Determine how these social network characteristics relate to perceived isolation (loneliness) and to physical and mental health among bereaved parents.
- Identify adaptive strategies that help bereaved parents keep or rebuild social connections, through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with about 45 parents.
- Compare Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy, supportive psychotherapy and enhanced usual care, all delivered by telehealth, for reducing prolonged grief and depression in a multisite trial of 265 parents bereaved by cancer, using blinded diagnostic interviews.
- Explain the trial's quantitative results with qualitative interviews of 48 participants, and test mediators and moderators to learn which grief therapy works best, for whom, and why.
More about the research
Yet effective, accessible support for them is limited, and many do not know where to turn. Two projects address this from different angles. One measures how parents' social relationships break down after a child's death and how that affects their health. The other tests whether a grief therapy delivered by video at home can reduce their suffering. Together, they aim to give healthcare systems evidence-based ways to support bereaved parents.
Why it matters
Parents who lose a child face serious risks to their mental and physical health, yet evidence-based, accessible bereavement support is scarce. This work could give healthcare and palliative care systems a tested telehealth grief therapy that parents can receive at home. It could also yield practical resources and specific intervention targets for preventing social isolation after loss. The approach could later be extended to other bereaved groups.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tracey Wilson
SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Characterize longitudinal, multidimensional patterns of social connection before and during the COVID era in the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study, and identify social, behavioral and genomic predictors including polygenic risk scores.
Lisham Ashrafioun
University of Rochester, NY·Psychology
Test whether six weekly telehealth sessions of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Perceived Social Isolation (CBT-PSI) reduce loneliness more than therapist-delivered or self-guided Health Education in 300 adults with opioid use disorder.
Rohini Pahwa
New York University, NY·Social Science
Measure how the social networks of 600 Black and Latino/a adults with serious mental illnesses change in size, membership, support and belonging over 18 months, using ego-centric network maps at three time points.
The school
University of Miami: 30 labs on PI Pages, $559M a year on research, 297 research doctorates a year.
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