Adjusting to death of a loved one

Study confirms patterns of grief, highlights yearning

"Is my grief normal?" That is one of the most common questions posed by people who have lost a loved one. A new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers has helped answer that question by affirming the commonly accepted stages of grief - disbelief, yearning, anger, depression, and acceptance - and the sequence in which these emotions occur. The findings appear in the Feb. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

While offering insights into how individuals normally adjust to a loved one's natural death, the study also challenges existing clinical guidelines by underscoring that yearning, not depression, was the most common reaction experienced by survivors.

"This study confirms what people have suspected, but, equally important, the data provide a benchmark for how grief changes over time," says senior author Holly Prigerson, director of Dana-Farber's Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care Research.

Based on the three-year Yale Bereavement Study, the grief investigation involved interviews with 233 individuals in Connecticut who had suffered a loss from a natural death (such as cancer or heart disease) rather than trauma (such as a car accident or suicide). Each participant was interviewed three times over two years, most often at home; data were collected between January 2000 and January 2003.

The study found that counter to clinical literature and popular understanding, yearning, rather than depression, was the most common emotion felt by study participants after a loved one's natural death. "Up to now, people thought sadness was the most characteristic feature of bereavement, but these data show it is more about yearning and pining and missing the person - a hunger for having them come back," says Prigerson, a bereavement expert.


by the Harvard Gazette

This column, really hit's home because I don't deal with death that good, this gave me an understanding.