Models of psychological intervention for parents of children with oncological disease.

The death of a child is one of the greatest tragedies in a parent’s life and has shattering effects on the family system, nevertheless there isn’t a word for naming parents that lose a son. Considering too individual differences, the ways for facing the mourning are influenced from the circumstances of death, from the exchanged gestures and the uttered words of the preceding moments. Sense of guilt and doubt of having made all possible are accompanied to fear for forgetting the dead child. The parents suffer both for losing their son and for the deprivation of the son’s meaning for themselves: the child death constitutes the loss of a part of themselves and their own identity. A review of the concepts about the process of mourning elaboration - process that needs a deep restructure of the inner world of the individual - is proposed in this work following various theoretical guidelines (psychoanalytic theories, attachment theory, existential approaches, systemic theories, model of psychosocial transition) and beginning from a mourning definition as a whole of individual and social behaviors regarding the loss of a meaningful person. This work analyzes the influence both of the society meaning of death and mourning and of the social and religious rituals. Considering the whole of these factors, some proposals of intervention are comparatively assessed: self-help groups, support groups and individual interventions of accompanying interventions. Finally, a section is dedicated to preventive interventions feasible during the terminal phase of life of children with oncological disease.