Justifications of feticide.

This qualitative research explores the justifications that Israeli women provided for their decision to end their late-stage pregnancies, or in other words to undergo feticide. A constructivist approach was used, as it recognizes the significance of sociocultural narratives in the construction of people's experiences. Data from in-depth interviews were analyzed using an adapted version of constant comparative analysis to identify and develop categories and thematic patterns. Three main themes were identified, which incorporated the various justifications women use in explaining their decision to undergo feticide: justifications related to the mother and her family; justifications related to the fetus; and justifications related to the views of medical professionals and society at large. The analysis process further revealed an overall conceptualization: wrongful life and a wrongful birth, which underlie the 3 themes. In the justification process, the women drew on a number of strategies to uphold their positions as moral caring human beings and good mothers, including denial of injury, appeal to higher loyalties, and defense of necessity. These justifications seem to have failed, as the women continued to struggle with the morality of their decision. Women's difficulties were grounded in contradicting social messages concerning feticide, as feticide is a relatively common yet socially unrecognized and undiscussed procedure in Israel. The findings highlight the interface between personal experience and social phenomena and call for an open social discourse on feticide. (PsycINFO Database Record

Unanticipated death of a partner: the loss experience of bereaved girlfriends of fallen Israeli soldiers.

This qualitative study examined the loss experience of 15 Israeli bereaved girlfriends of fallen soldiers. The girlfriends of fallen Israeli soldiers are socially unacknowledged as being bereaved. This disenfranchised experience of grief is conveyed through social exclusion components and personal experiences of grief that were conceptualized into four themes: (a) learning about the loss; (b) loneliness and lack of social support; (c) intensifying initial experiences while creating alternative social networks; and (d) missed opportunities. The results provide new insight into the concept of disenfranchised grief suggesting it is a multidimensional experience that includes personal, interpersonal, and social dimensions, each of which falls along a continuum ranging from a sense of acceptance to a sense of exclusion. Results also suggest that there are various depths to the experience of disenfranchised grief, which changes over time. Thus, disenfranchised grief is an ongoing and temporal personal, interpersonal, and social experience. Practical implications are discussed.

The association of process with outcomes in child group therapy.

This study investigated the prediction of outcomes by process variables related to client and therapist behavior in support groups of children being treated for emotional and behavioral difficulties. The study included 40 groups (N=266) and 40 counselors. The association of process with outcomes was analyzed through hierarchical structural equation modeling (Mplus 5.1). The child model showed that bonding affected group functioning and anxiety, group functioning affected social competence and client behavior, therapeutic change affected anxiety, and reduced anxiety affected reduction in aggression. The therapist model pointed to encouragement, interpretation, and therapist self-disclosure as having a positive impact on outcomes and challenges as affecting them negatively. The discussion points to the importance of process variables for clinicians.