Stress-related growth among the recently bereaved

Abstract

Although stress-related growth (SRG), or a personal transformation beyond adaptation, can be an outcome for some individuals after a traumatic life experience like spouse or partner loss, it is often assumed that some time needs to pass before this happens. This study reports on early experiences of SRG relatively soon after the loss of a spouse or partner in mid and later life. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 292 recently bereaved (2–6 months) partners, aged 50+, as part of the Living After Loss study conducted in Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Substantial variability in SRG was observed where 21% scored ≥1 SD above and approximately 18% scored ≥1 SD below the sample mean of 17.2 (SD = 7.0). Regression analyses revealed that SRG was more likely for those who had expected their partners’ deaths, who were more religious and who engaged in loss- and restoration-oriented coping processes, and was independent of grief levels. Findings suggest that some individuals drew upon their religious beliefs as a way to find meaning and make sense of what happened as they rebuilt their ‘assumptive world’. Also, those who anticipated their partner's death could have had more opportunity to cognitively process the loss, address the challenges of widowed life and learn new skills and discover previously unrecognized strengths.

Keywords:

• partner loss
• loss- and restoration-oriented coping
• cognitive processing
• anticipated loss
• religiosity

Acknowledgement

This study was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (RO1 AG023090). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Aging or the National Institute of Health. We are grateful to Drs. Crystal Park and Lawrence Cohen, who generously shared with us information on the SRGS-SF.

Notes

Notes

1.  Those who self-initiated contact with the project went through similar screening procedures.

2.  Owing to multicollinearity problems, the full model could not include both grief and loss-oriented coping simultaneously. The bivariate correlation between these two variables is 0.76 (p ≤ 0.001). We reported a model that excludes grief since none of the models we ran (single or full) found a significant relationship between grief and SRG, including when grief was entered in place of loss-orientation in the full model.