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Background & objectivesMethods and ResultsConclusionsWorry and loss-related secondary stressors appear to be important correlates of problematic grief responses. However, the relative importance of these variables in the context of established correlates of grief responding, ranging from indicators of identity disruption and demographic characteristics of the bereaved to characteristics of the loss of quality of the relationship with the deceased, is unknown. Modeling the relative associations of these factors can be problematic, given the high degree of collinearity between these variables. This study used a machine learning approach to provide accurate estimations of the relative importance of these correlates for post-loss symptom severity.A convenience sample of 428 bereaved people who had lost a parent, spouse, or child in the last 30 to 365 days completed an online survey. Random forest regression modeling examined the effects of worry and secondary stressors on symptom severity in the context of established correlates. Results indicated worry and the number of secondary stressors experienced were among the factors most strongly associated with severity of grief, depression, posttraumatic stress and problems functioning.These results also provide insight into the relative importance of worry and secondary stressors affecting grief severity to guide future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the authors measured grief processing and deliberate grief avoidance and examined their relationship to adjustment at 4 and 18 months of bereavement for 2 types of losses (spouse, child) in 2 cultures (People's Republic of China, United States). Three hypotheses were compared: the traditional grief work assumption, a conditional grief work hypothesis, and a view of grief processing as a form of rumination absent among resilient individuals. Although cultural differences in grief processing and avoidance were observed, the factor structure of these measures proved invariant across cultures. Consistent with the grief work as rumination hypothesis, both grief processing and deliberate grief avoidance predicted poor long-term adjustment for U.S. participants. Furthermore, initial grief processing predicted later grief processing in both cultures. However, among the participants in the People's Republic of China, neither grief processing nor deliberate avoidance evidenced clear psychological consequences.

Objectives: Inclusion of Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) in the ICD-11 warrants examination of risk factors using diagnostic criteria as there is a paucity of research that has examined risk factors of PGD using the diagnostic criteria. This study examines if the identified risk factors for prolonged grief predict PGD using the diagnostic criteria across three samples. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was used to assess risk factors and PG-13 in three distinct samples of bereaved adults. The PG-13 was either parsed dichotomously using the ICD-11 diagnostic criteria to indicate presence of PGD or summed to index general grief severity. Results: When using ICD-11 diagnostic criteria, only female gender and high levels of pre-loss contact were identified in separate samples as increasing risk of diagnosis. The most replicable results across samples were found when using the summed PG-13 symptom scores. When using the PG-13 total score, younger age and more pre-loss contact with the deceased were associated with higher symptom levels, which replicated in all three studies. Conclusions: This study provided evidence that the extant literature using summed scores to explore risk factors might not generalize to the ICD-11 diagnostic criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature indicates laypeople hold strong opinions about how persons should grieve. This study examined how individuals perceive normal grief. Participants across two distinct samples (Study 1: N = 510 via MTurk; Study 2: N = 210 via Qualtrics panels) completed the Perception of Grief Scale and Grief Expectations Questionnaire. Findings indicated participants endorsed maladaptive grief responses as normal relative to other responses to loss. Endorsement of maladaptive grief responses as normal predicted endorsement of grief work beliefs. If social expectations deem maladaptive grief to be normal, as this study suggests, bereaved individuals might implicitly push themselves to grieve maladaptively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined changes in Pre-Loss Grief (PLG) among individuals whose family member has a life limiting illness and how baseline psychosocial factors predicted PLG. This two-wave study recruited family members of advanced cancer (N = 100) and dementia (N = 38) patients. A subsample completed 1-month follow-up (Cancer = 33; Dementia = 28). Higher caregiver burden and female participants predicted greater PLG at follow-up, accounting for baseline PLG. Family members of dementia patients (10.5%) were significantly more likely than family members of cancer patients (2.1%) to be in the "severe PLG" group. Findings demonstrate psychosocial factors related to PLG, informing interventions aimed at reducing PLG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has indicated that many people faced with highly aversive events suffer only minor, transient disruptions in functioning and retain a capacity for positive affect and experiences. This article reports 2 studies that replicate and extend these findings among bereaved parents, spouses, and caregivers of a chronically ill life partner using a range of self-report and objective measures of adjustment. Resilience was evidenced in half of each bereaved sample when compared with matched, nonbereaved counterparts and 36% of the caregiver sample in a more conservative, repeated-measures ipsative comparison. Resilient individuals were not distinguished by the quality of their relationship with spouse/partner or caregiver burden but were rated more positively and as better adjusted by close friends. Keywords: loss, bereavement, resilience, depression

Social expectations influence how we cope with loss and how people in our social networks respond to us. Wortman and Silver outlined Western cultural assumptions, or myths, about mourning, thought to influence judgments of one's grief response. In particular, the two myths hypothesized to affect social judgments about grievers' adjustment were related to (a) the intensities of the grief response and (b) the duration of the grief response. We assessed if these myths affected the attributions of potential support providers in a convenience sample of 510 Amazon Mechanical Turk community participants. The results indicated preheld expectancies that expressing and processing loss is important to recover from grief was related to attributions about the adjustment of spousally bereaved grievers in vignettes. However, any level of grief symptoms displayed in vignettes was associated with participants, indicating they would discourage expression of grief and distance themselves from the person grieving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Understanding depression as biologically caused has been shown to impact both treatment preferences and prognostic pessimism. Attribution theory has been posited as an explanation for this relationship. Given that evidence‐based psychotherapy is effective yet often not delivered to individuals with depression, the present study sought to determine factors that impact treatment credibility. Design: Non‐treatment‐seeking, depressed individuals (n = 229) were randomly assigned to read a psychoeducation article about depression that consisted of a biological causal explanation, psychosocial causal explanation, or a non‐causal control. Methods: Attributional dimensions of locus, stability, and control were examined as mediating the relationship between causal explanation and treatment credibility and prognostic pessimism. Results: Individuals in the biological condition were more likely to find antidepressant medication a credible treatment for depression. The manipulation had no direct effect on preference for psychotherapy or prognostic pessimism. Attributional dimensions of locus, stability, and control did not mediate the relationship between causal explanation and treatment credibility. To the extent that the psychosocial article increased perceived instability of the depression cause, however, prognostic pessimism was reduced. Conclusions: The present study has implications for framing education about depression in mental health literacy programs and public awareness campaigns. Practitioner points: This study found that conceptualizing depression as biologically caused increased the credibility of medication but not psychotherapyParticipants reading a biological explanation of depression demonstrated an increase on some aspects of stigma and prognostic pessimismEmphasizing the person–environment interaction rather than biological causes decreased the perceived stability of depression which was associated with a decrease in prognostic pessimism [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]