Death studies
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Public attitudes about normal and pathological grief.
Determining public expectations of grief is an important contributor to the debate differentiating normal from pathological grief. An international sample of 348 participants was randomly allocated to 1 of 12 conditions comprising a bereavement vignette and self-report items measuring grief expectations and social distance. ⋯ Gender of the bereaved and circumstances of death did not influence expectations, but did interact to influence social distance. These factors must be accounted for in determining a deviation from the norm in diagnostic nosology.
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Review
Terror management theory applied clinically: implications for existential-integrative psychotherapy.
Existential psychotherapy and Terror Management Theory (TMT) offer explanations for the potential psychological effects of death awareness, although their respective literatures bases differ in clarity, research, and implications for treating psychopathology. Existential therapy is often opaque to many therapists, in part due to the lack of consensus on what constitutes its practice, limited published practical examples, and few empirical studies examining its efficacy. By contrast, TMT has an extensive empirical literature base, both within social psychology and spanning multiple disciplines, although previously unexplored within clinical and counseling psychology. This article explores the implications of a proposed TMT integrated existential therapy (TIE), bridging the gap between disciplines in order to meet the needs of the aging population and current challenges facing existential therapists.
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The purpose of this prospective study was to identify factors in 66 spouses and adult child caregivers of person's with Alzheimer's disease prior to the death that predicted higher levels of grief in bereavement. A hierarchical regression model was tested. ⋯ Factors that contributed significantly to postdeath grief included predeath grief and depression. Results from this study indicate that risk factors for postdeath grief can be predicted prior to the death.