Support for families bereaved by cot death: joint voluntary and professional view.

I don't think the horror of turning my baby over and realising he was dead will ever leave me." The many problems facing families who experience a cot death were sensitively described five years ago by Emery,' and their counselling needs have been discussed by one of us.2 Our experience suggests, however, that despite steady progress in understanding the nature, if not the causes, of cot deaths, the difficulties for bereaved families remain great and have received too little attention, especially from health professionals. Our description of these difficulties and suggestions for easing them are based on contacts made by the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths with over 1000 families bereaved by cot death from all parts of Britain, and on home visits made by a paediatrician to over 50 such families on Tyneside, which formed part of a continuing study of postneonatal mortality.3