150 Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan
as an impediment to getting emerging adults to make use of therapeutic help
when bereaved by suicide or when considering suicide (Wilson et al., 2013).
Educating peers to provide informal assistance and monitoring, while also
urging use of formal help resources, are suggested as important strategies for
assisting emerging adults.Nondeath Loss
Although emerging adults experience many nondeath losses, many fit within
the category of typical or maturational losses and will be addressed there.
Here, the nontypical loss of chronic and life-threatening illness is addressed
due to its significant challenges in emerging adulthood.Chronic and Life-Threatening Illness
Emerging adults enduring chronic illness need to receive care at the point
in their development where asserting independence is extremely important.
This is challenging to them and to their caretakers. Emerging adults coping
with life-threatening illness approach death and adulthood at the same time,
and their challenges are much different than those of older adults facing
imminent death. Because emerging adults tend to hold “Just World” ide-
ologies (Lerner, 1980, 1997), they may blame themselves or others for their
condition. They often assume that bad outcomes result from “being bad” (a
premise of Just World thinking), failing to grasp that such moral symmetry
is rare.
Emerging adults not only want to believe in a just world, but also may
be young enough to believe that all events are subject to control. They may
therefore attribute their illness to “something bad that was done,” such as poor
health habits, or assume that a physician missed a telling symptom earlier in
life. Laying blame allows them to maintain the illusion of pervasive control
that most people see through only as they age into adulthood.
When emerging adults are critically ill or dying, their care needs usually
take precedence over developmental needs. Hospitals may put them on wards
with children or much older adults with whom they have little in common.
Although most emerging adults remain connected to their family of origin’s
home, providers must pay special attention to assessing the type of physical
care provider and place where a final illness plays out so that the emerging
adult has some sense of control in the home care, palliative care, or hospice
planning. Grinyer and Thomas (2004) contend that despite most emerging
adults’ preference for a home death, “it cannot be assumed that the nature of
the relationship between parent and adult child is such that the latter can eas-
ily slip back into childhood dependency in the parental home in the face of a
life-threatening illness” (p. 128).
Research on emerging adults with chronic illness indicates that they
“value qualities relating to personal characteristics of the provider as more
important than those relating to the physical environment of the provider”
(Farrant & Watson, 2003, p. 177). Typically, emerging adults who are ill want to
discuss a wide range of health topics, including their mental health, yet health