A Descriptive Analysis on Psychosocial Stressors, Coping Strategies, and Attachment Style of Adolescents Who Experience Parental Loss Due to COVID-19

The death of a parent is considered a salient life experience, being accompanied by social and environmental factors that may act to moderate such a person’s response to parental loss. The goal of the study is to investigate the psychosocial stressors, coping strategies, and attachment styles of adolescents who experienced parental loss due to COVID-19. The significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people's lives have been examined in previous research. However, rather than emphasizing deaths due to COVID-19, the majority of them concentrated on the physical, emotional, and mental health of children and adults as well as parental loss due to other health conditions. The current study utilized a quantitative approach, specifically descriptive analysis with the use of statistical procedures to determine the adolescent’s dominant stressors, coping strategies, and attachment styles. The study was employed among 15 college students in the different universities in the city of Cebu who were 18-24 years old. Instruments that were utilized in the study included the following: (a) Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire of West et al. (1998), (b) Brief COPE Inventory of Carver (1997), and (c) Integration of Stressful Life Experiences Scale (ISLES) of Holland et al. (2010). Based on the data gathered, parental loss is a psychosocial stressor experienced by the adolescents. Results showed that Goal-corrected partnership was the most prevalent attachment style among adolescents who had experienced parental loss due to COVID-19, whereas Problem-focused coping was the most dominant coping strategy utilized by the respondents. Furthermore, at the end of the study, the researchers provided a psychosocial support program for adolescents who had lost a parent due to the COVID-19 virus in order to help them overcome this trauma and build new life practices.