Bereaved students are sometimes described as “hidden grievers” due to their neglect in bereavement research, policy, and practice.
A research study quotes figures estimating that 22-30% of full-time US students are bereaved at any given time. However, very little is known about how higher education institutions in the UK support students bereaved during or immediately before beginning their studies.
Bereavement involves adapting to a range of changes brought about by death, including present relationships, social status, economic circumstances, and future plans. Any, and all, of these may impact on study requirements over the academic year, and the unpredictable experience of bereavement and grief.
The Role of Time and Support
It is accepted that a bereaved person needs time and support to recover. Given sufficient time and appropriate support, bereavement may produce resilience, personal growth, maturity, and well-being.
In contrast, lack of support and opportunity to confide in sympathetic others may hamper grief, including finding meaning in an experience that may bring considerable pain and upheaval.
It is therefore in the interests of universities to ensure bereaved students receive sufficient time and support as they travel through their bereavement and grief process and continue their studies. The alternative can risk students withdrawing from their studies through feeling isolated and overwhelmed by grief.
Contrasting Student Experiences of Bereavement Support
The study cites two contrasting student experience’s of coping with bereavement whilst studying at university. The first student failed to find support after the the death of her father. When she signed up for counselling, she had to wait 6 weeks and could only be offered two sessions. After bottling up her grief for several months, she suffered a breakdown during her first-year exams and the examiners were unable to take account of her bereavement because it had not occurred within the regulatory 1 week of exams starting.
A second student’s experience from another university was more positive, and he put his coping with bereavement down to both good counselling from the university’s student support centre and sharing his grief with a close-knit group of friends.
Six Areas of Student Life Affected by Grief
Grief due to external and internal factors may affect six areas of student life:
- Physical, for example, sleep problems;
- Behavioural, including managing time and meeting deadlines;
- Interpersonal, such as others not understanding or wanting to hear about one’s grief;
- Cognitive, or difficulties concentrating and remembering, which may affect academic performance and grades;
- Emotional, or coping with intensely painful emotions and sudden, unpredictable outbursts of crying;
- Spiritual, or searching for answers to existential questions.
For bereaved university students, the meaning and impact of these responses reflects a unique set of issues related to living away from family, forming a sense of identity and adjusting to full time study and university life. These issues may make it difficult for them to talk about their loss, leading to a sense of isolation and a pressure to pretend that everything is OK.
Students may also feel unable to share their bereavement with peers and experience them as unsympathetic. For this reason, bereaved students may not fully disclose the impact of bereavement to tutors or student support services and may suffer in silence to the extent of leading a double life.
Summary
The study found that bereaved students’ seeking counselling support or pastoral care is the exception rather than the rule. Counselling is often seen as a sign that they are not coping and need mental health support, thus running the risk of being stigmatised.
The study stated that with a poor existing bereavement culture, responses from University institutions to bereaved individuals rely heavily on guidance, empathy and discretion of staff/colleagues, and the extent to which senior management recognise the potential effects of bereavement.
Left to their own devices, therefore, bereaved university students are likely to be vulnerable to under or over-reaction by either attempting to carry on as “usual” or being unable to carry on at all, or both – carrying on as usual eventually leading to a mental/emotional breakdown in the student.
The study concludes that Universities have a responsibility to establish good, accessible practice in dealing with student bereavement.
References:
A full list of references is available in the Reference Material section.
- Barnet, L. ed. (2009) When Death Enters the Therapeutic Space: Existential Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Counselling. Hove: Routledge.
- Lendrum, S. and Syme, G. (2004) Gift of Tears: A Practical Approach to Loss and Bereavement in Counselling and Psychotherapy. 2nd ed. Hove: Routledge.
- Valentine, C and Woodthorpe, K (2018). Supporting bereaved students at university: Balancing institutional standards and reputation alongside individual compassion and care. Journal of Death Studies, 44(1).
