Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet

Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Care, dying, death, and loss in children’s drawings from the Covid-19 pandemic in Sweden
Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; End-of-Life Care Research Group, Vrije University Brussels, Brussels, Belgium.
Department of Medicine, University of California, CA, San Francisco, United States; Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, CA, San Francisco, United States.
Department of Psychology, European University of Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany.
Department of Psychology, European University of Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany.
Show others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Death Studies, ISSN 0748-1187, E-ISSN 1091-7683Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]

Most studies gather data on children’s Covid-19 experiences from proxy adults rather than from children. We explore depictions of end-of-life issues in drawings created by children in Sweden about their experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, generated in response to an open invitation to schools, teachers, culture centers, etc. from a public archive of children’s art. A transdisciplinary team inductively analyzed 172 drawings containing images of care, dying, death and loss, finding qualitatively different portrayals differentiated by focus on (re)actors versus victims in the pandemic. The virus was often drawn as an aggressive, active agent, while humans, including professionals, appeared reactive and at a loss. The largest group of victims were without identity, although some children depicted themselves as victims. These children illustrate Covid-19-related questions, concerns, and fears about the end of life, reflecting "epistemological uncertainty" resulting from the pandemic. This uncertainty should be addressed, for example by trustworthy support in making sense of surrounding world, and by pro-active death educational approaches for both children and the adults who are in contact with them.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2025.
National Category
Epidemiology Public Health, Global Health and Social Medicine Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-238114DOI: 10.1080/07481187.2025.2487787ISI: 001462484100001PubMedID: 40202518Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105002716363OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-238114DiVA, id: diva2:1955079
Available from: 2025-04-28 Created: 2025-04-28 Last updated: 2025-04-28

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(30084 kB)21 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 30084 kBChecksum SHA-512
2ef88e5ac07c480e381bc1c43d5d2caa51319ad0cff2eae3f70f5e4729241aff9d13c4fafc31cef38190d8a5a767342bdd71d12a3c3e7110f2d9538457c7f7a4
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textPubMedScopus

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Rullander, Anna-Clara
By organisation
Department of Nursing
In the same journal
Death Studies
EpidemiologyPublic Health, Global Health and Social MedicineHealth Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 21 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn
Total: 192 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf