Identifying Indigenous People's Grieving and Funeral Practices as Components for Establishing a Grief Support Framework: An Integrative Literature Review.
Rehanna Felix, Emmerentia du Plessis, Issie Jacobs
PMID 41347527WHAT IT FOUND
Grief support for Indigenous people relies on collective community involvement, specific traditional and ancestral rituals, and open expression of emotion.
Nurses must ask about these cultural practices rather than assuming standard hospital bereavement protocols fit the family's needs.
Key findings
01Three core components emerged for an Indigenous grief support framework: collective grieving and funeral approaches, specific traditional and ancestral rituals, and the open expression of emotions.
02Funeral and mourning processes are collective, involving family, friends, and the wider community in attending, participating, and sharing meals.
03Open expression of emotion, particularly crying and wailing, is a culturally specific requirement for mourning, often performed by female members of the community.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only English-language studies were included, potentially excluding significant cultural data from other regions. Many of the 14 included articles had unspecified methodologies or sample sizes, and some were rated as low quality in the critical appraisal. The review describes practices but does not evaluate the effectiveness of any specific grief support framework.
Declared interests
The study was part of a PhD project by author one. No specific commercial funding or conflicts of interest were declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these findings as evidence that a specific grief intervention works. This review describes cultural practices and components for a framework; it does not test patient outcomes or prove that applying these components reduces grief-related morbidity.