Citation

Kristensen P, Weisaeth L, Heir T. Death Stud. 2010; 34(2): 137-150.

Affiliation

Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, Oslo, Norway.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

24479178

Abstract

The authors examined predictors of complicated grief (CG) in Norwegians 2 years after bereavement in the 2004 South-East Asian tsunami. A cross-sectional postal survey retrospectively covering disaster experiences and assessing CG according to the Inventory of Complicated Grief yielded 130 respondents (35 directly disaster-exposed and 95 not directly exposed), with 47.7% screening CG positive. They identified positive associations between CG and being female, losing a child or spouse, and time to death confirmation, and negative associations with previous losses, being employed, and receiving social support. Direct exposure did not increase CG risk. Support service providers should be aware of this high prevalence of severe, persistent grief.

Language: en