Grieving Process and Grief Coping Strategies of Selected Bereaved Students in a State College in Manila

Abstract

This study looked into the grieving process and grief coping strategies of bereaved college students in a state college in Manila. Grief and bereavement affect students holistically, impacting their emotional, cognitive, physical, social, and spiritual/religious state because of these impacts, it is extremely important for faculty and administration of the institute to recognize the frequency of grief on campus. It is also crucial for the institution to understand how students respond to their grieving and to identify who is grieving, to ensure that the institution retains students. To determine the grieving process and grief coping strategies of students in a state college in Manila, a researcher-made survey was validated and reliability tested. The respondents of this study are composed of 61 bereaved students from the College of Arts and Sciences. Based on the results gathered, the respondents often experience the feelings of grief upon learning that they have lost a loved one during the difficult time of the pandemic. Although acceptance was very highly expressed, they likewise suffered highly from denial; bargaining; anger, and depression. They deal with their grief using the two orientations – loss and restoration—equally. Both loss-oriented and restoration-oriented obtained a mean of 2.75 with an interpretation of “often” indicating that the bereaved student moderately employs the grief coping strategy of both loss-oriented and restoration-oriented. And, there is no significant and positive relationship between the grieving process the respondents experienced and their grief coping strategies.

Keywords

• bereaved students
• depression
• denial
• loss-orientation
• restoration-orientation