The impact of peer death on adolescent girls: a task-oriented group intervention.

Adolescents' exposure to death is high, with approximately 40% of adolescents reporting past year death of a peer. Each of the estimated annual 14,000 deaths of adolescents has an impact on friends, classmates, and peers, with adolescent girls experiencing more peer deaths within a one year time frame than boys. Much of the literature focuses on parent or sibling death but little on the death of a peer. The sudden and unexpected nature of adolescent deaths appears to be a common experience that deeply affects adolescent girls and puts them at risk for a wide range of negative physical, emotional, social, and cognitive outcomes. The author outlines a task-oriented group intervention that meets the developmental, emotional, cognitive, and gender-specific needs of adolescent girls grieving the death of a peer.