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Abstract
Spousal loss is one of life’s greatest stressors. Bereaved spouses are at risk for aberrant cognitive and affective processing. Recent work in psychoneuroimmunology and cognitive neuroscience reveals physiological biomarkers and neural mechanisms underlying acute distress and grief during bereavement that may represent targets for future interventions. We review evidence from existing pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment approaches for normal bereavement, complicated grief, and bereavement-related depression. We propose promising future directions, namely the development and empirical validation of novel, personalised cognitive and neurostimulatory interventions to promote adaptive emotion regulation and reduce depressive symptoms following spousal loss. Future work may substantiate which interventions to improve emotional and physical health will be best matched to the needs of a particular surviving spouse.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a Rice University Faculty Initiatives Fund Grant (to Dr. Denny) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (National Institute of Health grant R01 HL127260 to Dr. Fagundes).
Disclosure statement
This work was supported by a Rice University Faculty Initiatives Fund Grant and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (National Institute of Health). This publication is solely the work of the authors. The study sponsors had no role in the writing of the manuscript or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Notes
1 To note, in this article the term bereavement will be used to refer to the fact of loss, while the term grief will refer to the emotional, cognitive, and behavioural responses to death (Zisook & Shear, 2009).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Anoushka D. Shahane
Christopher P. Fagundes
