Bearing the Unseen Burden: Ambiguous Loss in Teens Living with Chronic Illness - 2024 Child Life Conference

Only available as part of a package

Living with chronic illness can jeopardize adolescents’ mental health as they grieve the loss of normalcy and adjust their long-term health perceptions and hopes. Developmentally, adolescents frequently depend on parents to recognize their distress and help them access care, yet adolescents are also skilled in masking their emotions around others. This presentation will describe the results of a mixed-methods study on the loss, grief, and coping experiences of adolescents living with chronic illness and their parents, illuminating the impact of differing perceptions in parent-child dyads and implications for child life services.

Please note: All webinar content and its certificate will expire on 7/10/2027 regardless of when it is purchased, accessed, or completed. At that point, contents will no longer be available in any form, including as an archive or as a PDU certificate. It is the responsibility of the learner to complete the contents and download and save the certificate for their records before 7/10/2027.

Briana Keller, MEd

Graduate Research Assistant

Vanderbilt University

Briana Keller is a research assistant at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include needs of siblings of children with chronic illness, and psychosocial care for children and families experiencing stigmatized grief. She has previously presented at conferences including the American Academy of Pediatrics, and published in journals such as Journal of Advanced Nursing and the Journal of Child Life. Briana holds a master's degree in Child Studies and will be beginning her PhD studies in the fall.