Personal Fear of Death and Grief in Bereaved Mothers

Abstract

The study explored the relation of fear of death (Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale) to maternal grief (Perinatal Grief Scale-33) following miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, or infant/child death. The 400 women participants were recruited from the website, e-mail lists, and parent groups of an organization that supports bereaved parents. Fear of death had a statistically significant relation with maternal grief. Fear of the Unknown, Fear of Premature Death, and Fear of Conscious Death made significant unique contributions to the variance in maternal grief. The fear of death operative in maternal grief seems to be the fear of personal extinction.

We are grateful to Professor Beverley Raphael and Professor Robert Kastenbaum for their comments on an earlier draft of this article and to Dr. Robert Halliday for automating the relative mean substitution method for inserting missing Likert scale values into SPSS.

Notes

Note. N = 400. Cronbach's α value for Fear of the Unknown was .88 when the item “I am afraid of meeting my creator” was omitted. PGS-33 = Perinatal Grief Scale-33; MFODS = Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale. The M and SD values in parentheses are data from Neimeyer and Moore (1994).

Note. N = number of actual loadings/number of predicted loadings; Factor = Factor number; M = mean value for actual loadings; MFODS = Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale.

Note. PGS-33 = Perinatal Grief Scale-33 Grief; Log-TRD = Log time lapse since most recent death; FODP = Fear of the Dying Process; FOD = Fear of the Dead; FOBD = Fear of Being Destroyed; FFSO = Fear for Significant Others; FOU = Fear of the Unknown; FCD = Fear of Conscious Death; FFBD = Fear for the Body after Death; FOPD = Fear of Premature Death.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.

Note. Step 1: R = .41 F(1, 398) = 81.32, p < .001, R ² = .17, Adjusted R ² = .17. Step 2: R = .54, F(9, 390) = 18.07, p < .001, R ² = .29, Adjusted R ² = .28. ΔR ² = .12, F change = 8.61, p < .001. Log-TRD = Log time lapse since most recent death. PGS-33 = Perinatal Grief Scale-33. MFODS = Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.