Does time heal all wounds? An investigation of time, grief, and attitudes toward death

Abstract

When experiencing the loss of a loved one, individuals adapt and change how they understand death, how they interpret the meaning of the loss, and how they remember the deceased. In the present study (N = 164), we investigated whether the time since the loss – recent or distant – was associated with individuals’ bereavement, attitudes toward death, and their meaning of death. We found that individuals who experienced a recent loss reported more grief and more negative death attitudes compared to individuals who experienced a loss more than 5 years ago. Moreover, the bereavement appeared to completely mediate the time since the loss and the individuals’ attitudes about death. The findings suggest that time-dependent adaptations after a loss shifts individuals’ death attitudes, grief symptoms, and thoughts about death.

Acknowledgements

The authors want to acknowledge the Department of Psychology at North Carolina State University which helped fund the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

This work was supported by North Carolina State University, Psychology Department;

Notes

1 Día de los Muertos: the literal translation from Spanish to English is “Day of the Dead.” For further details on this Hispanic holiday, see Gutiérrez et al. (2015).