Parental Grief After Child Homicide in Iran: Challenges and Integrated Intervention Development

Objective: Parents who lose a child due to a human factor, such as intentional homicide, experience profound and excruciating grief. The model of complicated grief is heavily influenced by culture, and this influence is even more pronounced in cases of grief resulting from homicide, which is tied to the criminal justice system—the present study aimed to conceptualize homicide-related grief in two phases. In the first phase, the researcher sought to understand the nature of grief among this group of bereaved parents. In the second phase, based on the qualitative analysis of the findings, an integrated intervention was developed to address the specific needs of these survivors and the content validity was assessed by specialists. Methods: This qualitative study employed a phenomenological approach and included parents who had lost their children to homicide. Participants were selected through purposive sampling from judicial courts in Gilan Province, Iran and the sample size was determined based on the data saturation criteria. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, and the analysis followed Colaizzi’s seven-step method. Results: Qualitative analysis of the interviews in the first phase identified three main themes—intrapersonal, interpersonal, and unfamiliar context—along with 45 subthemes. In the second phase, an integrative homicide bereavement intervention (IHBI) was developed, consisting of three stages and 18 sessions. The content validity index and content validity ratio were 0.98 and 0.84, respectively. Conclusion: Bereaved parents who have lost a child to homicide face unique challenges that disrupt the healthy processing of grief-related emotions and significantly hinder their ability to carry out grief-related tasks. Based on the findings of this study, a specialized integrative grief intervention was developed to address the distinct needs of this group of survivors. The evaluation of expert opinions on this intervention indicates that it possesses acceptable content validity and can be utilized by therapists working with these survivors in judicial and law enforcement organizations.