Bereavement Flashcards
What is Bereavement?
the loss of one’s spouse that leads to physical illness, or even death.
Which of the sexes tend to live longer or likely experience the loss of a spouse?
women
A ______ friend or relative is typically the caregiver of the dying individual.
female
What groups of people are typically studied in the loss effect?
married, divorced, and single people
What is the loss effect?
Bereavement
Out of the 3 groups (married, divorced and single), which is ideal in studying the loss effect?
none, all needs to be considered
What are some of the evidence used in the findings of the loss effect?
- days of disability (missed work)
- symptom report (pain or illness)
- doctor and hospital visits
- mortality (state of being mortal, or susceptible to death; the opposite of immortality.)
- immune system function
what is the problem in the evidence days of disability?
could be due to emotional problems
what is the problem in the evidence symptom report?
could be reporting or noticing bias
what is the problem in the evidence on doctor or hospital visits?
could be because they stopped taking care of themselves, or were pressured to get check-uped
what is the problem in the evidence of mortality?
could be shared environment, or that marriage prevented illness
what is the problem in the evidence of illness?
is the loss effect just stress? or is there something more?
What were the two studies used to make associations between bereavement and immune function?
1) Bereaved women had lower natural killer cell activity.
2) Widows had lower NK cell activity one month after their husbands death than one month before.
What are the stages of grief?
1) Denial/Disbelief
2) Bargaining/Yearning
3) Anger
4) Depression
5) Acceptance
Compare and contras the hypothesized stage theory of grief and the actual data on stages of grief.
the hypothesized stage theory showed that they follow the order (denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance), with each peaking and dropping one after the other, but acceptances starts low and gradually increases by the end.
the actually data shows acceptance scored highest right from the beginning and continues to rise above the other factors, but when the scores were rescaled to show intensity, it clearly showed the same hypothesized theory on the stages.