Coping with traumatic loss: an interview with the parents of TWA 800 crash victims and implications for disaster mental health professionals.

The stories of survivors of traumatic events can be instructive to professionals who provide crisis intervention and/or psychotherapy to the bereaved. This paper provides excerpts from an interview with a middle-age married couple who lost two children in the 1996 explosion of TWA 800 over Long Island Sound. Their story illustrates important methods of coping with grief and sheds light on the value to survivors of recovering victims' remains. This case study is followed by a discussion about some elements of the interview that are helpful to an understanding of the grief process.