Yet grief work may be unnecessary for the large proportion of people who do not become significantly distraught after a loss. And when researchers have tested the common grief-work techniques of writing or talking about the death, some have found small benefits for the procedures, but most have not. In addition, the jury is still out on grief counseling, in which professionals or peers try to facilitate the working-through process. Results from two quantitative reviews of the efficacy of such therapy found no significant gains from it, and a third found just a modest positive effect. One caveat: the benefits might be slightly greater than these studies indicate because most of the subjects were recruited by the researchers, and these individuals may be less in need of counseling than those who seek help.
Finally, two teams of researchers followed bereaved persons, including spouses, adult children and parents, for up to five years after their loss and found little or no evidence of a delayed grief reaction. When such reactions have been found, they occur only in a very small percentage of the bereaved. Thus, the overall risk of reexperiencing a flood of negative emotions appears to be quite minimal.
Given that most people who have experienced the death of a loved one show few signs of distress or depression, many bereaved individuals may need no particular advice or help. The few who experience intense and lasting despair may benefit from interventions, although traditional grief counseling may not be the best choice. Instead people might consider seeking empirically supported psychotherapies for depression [see “The Best Medicine?” by Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld; Scientific American Mind, October/November 2007].
That said, our conclusions are based largely on studies of Caucasian American widows and widowers. We cannot say for sure that they extend to people of all ages, ethnicities and genders. In addition, reactions to a loss may depend on a person’s relationship to the deceased—be it a parent, sibling or child—as well as whether the death was sudden, violent or drawn out. The consequences of these varying perspectives and circumstances have yet to be carefully explored.
Nevertheless, we can confidently say that just as people live their lives in vastly different ways, they cope with the death of others in disparate ways, too. Despite what some pop-psychology gurus tell us, grief is not a one-size-fits-all experience
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Add CommentThe people studied were probably so brainwashed by their broken medical system, numbed by watching tv, undernourished by eating cheap gmo food, and confused by breathing toxic air and drinking toxic water that they can’t feel anything anymore. Now they read in your science magazine that it may not even be necessary to grieve the loss of a loved one. Please do more research before subjecting the world to your totally subjective, biased, and spiritually bankrupt views. It’s hard enough for the next generation to live in this world without ‘science’ telling them it may not be necessary to grieve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo not attempt to lambast an article which is based on scientific research with a collection of wildly inaccurate and opinionated statements based on nothing but personal opinions, before accusing it of bias and subjectivity. If you read the article, it concludes that different people may cope with the deaths of loved ones differently, and a logical decision based on the article would be to grieve anyway, just in case. Please, if you wish to comment, attempt to spark intellectual discussion, rather than simply rant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe caveat mentioned is an important one, while I have counciled several people who have suppressed feelings of grief, I have also met people who do not suffer such problems and I am not about to tell them they should or even less find people to tell them they should!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my experience as councilor, most of these problems come from something that is unresolved, about the relationship to the person, or about death itself perhaps, and that inhibits the proper moving on other people experience.
But as a councilor I would say it is a necessary prerequisite of emotional health to be willing to feel the feelings that are there. Its just that different people feel different things and should be free to feel what they do, not pressured to live up to other people's expectations, which in the case of expecting tears and sadness depression is just another form of suppressing the persons true and actual feelings.
I would also say that many older people have time to face the inevitability of death and come to terms with it before it actually occurs, again of course not everyone. Certainly not all but at least the opportunity is there!
Maybe the people who didn't show signs of depression or distress didn't love their spouses. Maybe it's not that these people weren't "coping with death in disparate ways" -- maybe they simply weren't grieving.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study seems to say more about marriage than about grieving.
Concerning Freud's insights:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should remember the statistical skew occurring within a clinician's experience. Freud wrote and developed his hypotheses in response to people who came to him and others as patients. Random samples, quantitative analysis, and other tools now used to overcome basic human psychological biases were unavailable to that physician.
Before we comment on proximate hypotheses, we might well consider
1: The authors did speculate for further study, upon the issues commentors redundantly bring up.
2:A simple basic belief/cognition (albeit one not prevalent in the culture they studied) like, "the deceased had lived fully in their time, and this was valid and beautiful and complete", or another such as was brought up by Freud's pupil Fritz Perls: "I am responsible for my life, and cannot be responsible for another free living being" (yes, he phrased it differently and more succinctly to some minds), can reduce survivor's guilt, which can directly lead to severe grief response.
In short, there are many cognitive avenues other than preexisting unhappiness, which the authors explored, available to help explain grief and lack thereof.
For assessment of validity of comments:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe spelling of a psychological profession is counselor.
Grief on the loss of a dear one is temporal for our basic reason that the death is an inevitable outcome of birth. But griefs for other reasons, such as inability to marry the beloved, or her betrayal, etc. are felt far and wide throughout the lifespans, for the reason that such losses are not inevitable and could be avoided.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the caveats mentioned in this article, are so significant, that taken with the spread in detected reactions, the headlines hugely overstates the case.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere appears to be many obvious variables not accounted for in the article and data, as other commentators have already noted.
Among them,
(I) It seems to be based on (mostly) elderly people. Dying from "natural" causes.
(II) No mention of any analysis of how deep the affection actual was between the spouses, prior to the loss. (Which from my personal observation can vary considerable, and for which I would like to see scientific data, to be able to compare back with the results.)
And, if you have lived a full life, and your partner is suffering from Alzheimer's, cancer or another crippling decease, you have both have had a long time to prepare yourself mentally, and you may also feel relived that the fight is finally over.
It is a natural event, something we all know will happen.
But how about a sudden, non natural event, natural catastrophes, involving young people, whole families with a single survivor, 20, 30years old, deeply in love, deaths of a young child, in events that are "unnatural", and/or could have been avoided...
Then we can begin to really evaluate the propositions in the headline in earnest.