Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. David DeMaso and Dr. Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich for allowing us to incorporate these bereaved families’ voices into their well established Experience Journal model. In addition, their hard work in identifying funding to allow this project to come to fruition was indispensable.  Both are child and adolescent psychiatrists in the Department of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. 

It has been an honor and privilege to have so many families and clinicians share their intimate experiences and insights into the tremendous sadness of the death of a child. Most importantly, we want to thank the families for their generosity in sharing so honestly and frankly their love for their children.

Paola Rodriguez and Sneha Rao from the Department of Psychiatry, Marsha Joselow social worker from PACT, and Dita Obler genetic counselor from cardiology worked as a multidisciplinary team to identify, recruit, interview, and debrief families from across hospital services who shared this experience. We would also like to thank Johanna Black MS CCLS, for her support throughout this project.

We would like to thank our team of reviewers that includes William Beardslee MD, Dorothy Beke RN, Eugene D’Angelo PhD, Lauren Gaskill PhD, Stuart Goldman MD, Jake Hirshberg, Cynthia Levin RN, Carrie Morris, and Elizabeth Wharff LICSW PhD for their additional support. We would also like to thank the students, Michele Jefferson, Abby Moore, Natasha Sokol, Meghan Meyerson. and Elisabeth Modestino for their help transcribing, organizing, and editing the content.

The video clips of the family interview were produced and edited by Dixon Yun of Children's Hospital Boston Media Communications. The web site was designed by Meghan Toczko.