“Happy Again” is a project in which we aim to develop an online self-help platform, based on scientific evidence, for people who are grieving after the loss of a loved one. In this application, we focus on the social needs of the bereaved and improving social connectedness with the supporting environment. This way, we hope to prevent or reduce symptoms of complicated grief.
The target group of the application is adolescents and young adults. This group is experienced in using digital applications and is expected to be more willing to use an application during the grief process.
Your challenge will be to design one or multiple features of the grief platform: what should the content be, what should it look like, and how should it function? You can address this challenge from one or multiple perspectives, such as a psychological perspective or technological perspective. You might create a prototype on paper or program a functional application, or something in between.
Stakeholders
In your design, it might be interesting to consider all stakeholders that could be involved during the implementation and use of the application:
End-users: grieving adolescents and young adults (12 – 25 years).
Therapists: professionals who can be referred to when more help is needed, who can monitor the progress of the clients in the application, and who can recommend the application to their clients as an addition to therapy.
Companies: for example, funeral organizations and insurance companies can recommend the application to their clients.
Research aim of the hackathon
Intervention: The main part of the application would be an intervention that helps users deal with their grief by better use of their social support system. Since we aim to focus on social needs and improving social connections, you can think about how to design the intervention to achieve this goal. How can we identify the social needs of the person that require attention? Who can become more important for support in the environment of the griever? How can we explain and encourage users to reshape their social environment and reach out to their friends and families in new ways? How can we help people with anxiety for making new or stronger connections with their social support? How can we help them find out which person in their social support is useful for which support task?
Social support integrated into the app: Not only the bereaved but also their environment could benefit from a grief platform. How can we ensure that supporters get involved in the application? What would they like to know about grief and grief support to become a better support themselves? How can we help them communicate with the bereaved, even if they have never experienced grief themselves? How can we help to enhance the rituals that people perform related to grieving?
Help with communication: We can offer help for the bereaved and the social support separately, but we can also create a feature where we help them come into contact with each other. It can be difficult to talk about sadness, death, and pain, so we tend to avoid it. Offering help in opening conversations on these more difficult topics can be very helpful to people to work through the pain and to gain insight into what is still difficult for them. How can we help the bereaved and the people in their environment to talk about difficult topics like the funeral, nightmares, strong emotions, anxiety, etc? Which questions or topics should be made available and how? How to track which topics are still difficult for a person and how to direct their attention without being forceful?
Aspects to keep in mind
Besides our main goal, some other aspects are usually aimed for in applications that you could keep in mind while developing your idea.
Psychoeducation: According to therapists in our first studies of this project, psychoeducation is an important aspect of grief support and is often the first feature that is implemented in e-health apps. For example, they explain what grief is, that it is normal to experience certain emotions, and how grieving processes differ between individuals. Not only the bereaved could use psychoeducation, but the supporting environment as well. How can we design the application to explain important concepts to both the bereaved and the support in an interactive and accessible way instead of the typical way of offering short bits of information?
Monitor and detect complicated grief: In the app, we would like to follow how (negative) emotions, (complicated) grief-related symptoms, and other comorbidities are developing. Many validated questionnaires already exist but which one should be picked and how should they be offered to the app users? How can we easily, unobtrusively, and continuously measure these symptoms without burdening the participants? How can we use these measures to determine when a user needs professional help? Existing, validated questionnaires could be useful methods to measure the mental state of a person, but also continuous self-tracking devices (like smartwatches) or Artificial Intelligence (AI) might be useful methods to reach personalization. Any idea is welcome!
Personalization: Grief can be very different for many people. People have their own way to grieve and deal with the loss. Individual characteristics (such as ADHD, and autism) or the circumstances (such as an expected or unexpected death) can cause a different grieving process. Therefore we want to check who is using the app, what their story is, and what we should recommend to them to help them in the best way possible. How can we personalize the application to fit the needs of each individual and their social support? What is relevant information on the social structure of the bereaved person? How can we best ask for this information about their social network and the social needs that are fulfilled by these people? Any idea is welcome!
Requirements for the end product
Digital platform: website or mobile application, or combination
Easily accessible and usable for the target group: adolescents and young adults
Features related to dealing with grief
Stand-alone intervention, not necessarily combined with therapy
Social component: involving the social environment, therapists, peers, etc.
Interesting literature
Breen, L. J., & O’Connor, M. (2009). Acts of Resistance: Breaking the Silence of Grief Following Traffic Crash Fatalities. Death Studies, 34(1), 30–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180903372384
Cacciatore, J., Thieleman, K., Fretts, R., & Jackson, L. B. (2021). What is good grief support? Exploring the actors and actions in social support after traumatic grief. PLoS ONE, 16(5 May). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252324
Djelantik, A. A. A. M. J., Robinaugh, D. J., & Boelen, P. A. (2022). The course of symptoms in the first 27 months following bereavement: A latent trajectory analysis of prolonged grief, posttraumatic stress, and depression. Psychiatry Research, 311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114472
Maciejewski, P. K., Falzarano, F. B., She, W. J., Lichtenthal, W. G., & Prigerson, H. G. (2022). A micro-sociological theory of adjustment to loss. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 96–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.06.016
Shear, M. K., Ghesquiere, A., & Glickman, K. (2013). Bereavement and Complicated Grief. Current Psychiatry Reports, 15(11), 406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-013-0406-z
Stroebe, W., Zech, E., Stroebe, M. S., Abakoumkin, G. (2005). Does Social Support Help in Bereavement? Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24(7), 1030–1050. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2005.24.7.1030
Wagner, B., Rosenberg, N., Hofmann, L., & Maass, U. (2020). Web-Based Bereavement Care: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00525
Zuelke, A. E., Luppa, M., Löbner, M., Pabst, A., Schlapke, C., Stein, J., & Riedel-Heller, S. G. (2021). Effectiveness and Feasibility of Internet-Based Interventions for Grief After Bereavement: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JMIR Mental Health, 8(12), e29661. https://doi.org/10.2196/29661
