Equivalence from the perinatal grief scale to the parental grief scale after the loss of a child

Abstract

Introduction: The most common manifestation of complicated grief comes with the death of a child. In this context, there is an urgent need for using scales aimed at parents in order to identify parental grief. Objective: To establish an equivalence from the Perinatal Grief Scale to the Parental Grief Scale after the loss of a child. Method: This is a methodological study involving data collection and analysis by means of a linguistic, semantic, cultural, conceptual and colloquial equivalence from the perinatal grief scale (Perinatal GS) to the parental grief scale (Parental GS) in Brazilian Portuguese. Results: For the equivalence from the Perinatal GS to the Parental GS, one proposal, applied to Brazilian Portuguese, and bearing in mind that the latter is a language with gendered words, was to replace bebê (baby) with filho(a) (son/daughter), and both feminine and masculine words were used when referring to parents. The committee of expert judges participating in the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Perinatal GS agreed on 100% of the changes. Conclusion: The proposal of the Parental GS expands the investigation of complicated grief for parents who have lost their children in all age groups.