Predicting complicated grief from grief processing

New York State Psychiatric Institute Dba Research Foundation For Mental Hygiene, Inc, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Abstract Most people grieving the loss of a loved one will experience a period of intense pain and focusing on the loss lasting around 6 months, which is known as acute grief. Complicated grief (CG) occurs when the experiences of acute grief extend well past 6-months post-loss. Thoughts and feelings about the loss (i.e. grief processing) occurring during acute grief may play a role in healthy grieving and protect against CG development. Identification of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms of grief processing that contribute to healthy grief resolution would advance knowledge of the goals of grieving and assist the development of interventions for complicated grief. Two core components of grief processing are top-down regulation and balanced loss confrontation. Top-down regulation is the ability to suppress processing of intrusive emotional information to pursue a stated goal. Top-down regulation may facilitate healthy grieving by allowing reprieve from intense loss related thinking. Balanced loss confrontation refers to the processing of the loss in a way that protects against emotional overload. Confrontation with the loss may assist in the process of reforming one's mental representations of the deceased. This study will test extrinsic and intrinsic measures of top-down regulation and balanced loss confrontation during acute grieving as predictors of CG development a year later. We will recruit a sample at high-risk for CG, the suicide-bereaved, in order to maximize the likeliness that a significant proportion of the sample develops CG. The findings produced by this study may advance the knowledge of how CG develops, assist in the identification of people at high-risk for developing CG and potentially form the basis for targeted interventions.