Losses experienced by children alienated from a parent.

Parental alienation occurs when a child aligns with one parent and unjustifiably rejects the other as a result of parental alienating behaviors. This article provides an overview of current research and theory regarding the losses alienated children endure. Parental alienating behaviors alter the child's beliefs, perceptions, and memories of the alienated parent, triggering a cascade of profound losses for the child. These losses include loss of individual self, childhood experiences, extended family, community, and activities and relationships essential for healthy development. Consequently, alienated children often experience ongoing and ambiguous losses and thereby suffer disenfranchised grief in isolation.

Managing and Mitigating Suffering in the Return-to-Work Process.

Each year thousands of workers experience a serious illness or injury that necessitates time off work and a subsequent re-engagement with the work environment. In Australia, workers' compensation legislation mandates the return-to-work (RTW) process is formal, structured, and negotiated between the worker, their employer, health care professionals and their RTW coordinator. How this is executed by those parties directly influences whether the RTW process is supportive and successful, or exacerbates the suffering of returning workers by causing them to feel ostracised, exposed, and vulnerable in their workplace. In this article, we examine how the RTW process can cause physical, emotional, social, and existential suffering for returning workers. We then discuss how the suffering that workers experience can be mitigated by five key factors: clarity of roles in the RTW process, alignment of worker and employer expectations, the advocacy provided by the RTW coordinator, the support provided for the worker's psychological wellbeing, and the RTW literacy of supervisors and colleagues.