JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Bereavement is a common and inevitable part of life. However, it is also difficult and disruptive. Prolonged Grief disorder has recently been added to the ICD-11 and the text-revised version of the DSM-5. Grief is a deeply cultural experience yet most research about grief and grief intervention is conducted in WEIRD countries. Support for grief is often limited and difficult to access. We propose that ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) present an opportunity to widen access to grief support, for those with subclinical levels of grief and develop culturally relevant interventions given their easy accessibility and opportunity to offer self-help support in people’s natural environments.

Objective:

In this article we describe the development protocol of two EMIs for grief, one in China and one in Switzerland.

Methods:

Both interventions will be developed using a collaborative research approach iterative development steps. This means that the content for the app will be developed after consultation with various grief experts, bereaved participants and the research team. After the initial content development another round of feedback will be gathered to ensure later acceptability.

Results:

Research has been gathered on existing interventions in both WEIRD and non-WEIRD contexts. Both studies have started recruitment, and the Chinese study has conducted the interviews with bereaved participants. The next steps are to continue recruitment and data gathering, analyze the collected data and extract important themes for intervention components, to then begin the app content development. Similarities and differences in the developmental process across both countries are discussed as well as some challenges to adapting grief interventions into an EMI format.

Conclusions:

We present two similar but non-identical development protocols for EMIs for grief support in two countries, where one is a WEIRD and one a non-WEIRD country.