Easing the transition to widowhood.

Abstract

Research indicates that widowhood is typically considered to be a stressful life event and that adapting to widowhood requires a significant amount of psychological and behavioral adjustment. As the older population dramatically increases, widowhood is a social phenomenon that will affect greater numbers of Americans. This study concentrated on depressive symptomatology and grief as two separate measures of psychological well-being and adjustment to the loss of a spouse. Widowhood researchers often utilize depressive symptomatology as a measure of well-being, but one of the aims of this study was to also examine grief to understand how trajectories of depressive symptomatology and grief vary among older widowed adults. The Convoy Model of Social Relations was used as the guiding framework, which proposed that individual characteristics, situational characteristics, as well as relationship quality will impact depressive symptomatology and grief. This study used the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) dataset which was specifically designed to study bereavement. CLOC is a prospective study of a two-stage area probability sample of 1, 532 married men and women aged 65 and older. This study utilized data from baseline (pre-loss), Wave 1 (6 months after the loss), Wave 2 (18 months after the loss), and Wave 3 (48 months after the loss). Data were analyzed using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) which allowed for a detailed examination of both between and within person differences in psychological well-being. This study also compared widowed older adult and married control groups to better understand how the loss of a spouse affects older adults. Results indicated that, in general, levels of depressive symptomatology and grief declined over time. Gender differences in social relationships with children and other family and friends were found. Mastery as well as positive and negative marital quality were also associated with psychological well-being. Analyses using widowed people and married controls revealed that there were no significant interactions between widowhood with mastery, marital quality, or social relationships. This indicated that the effects of these individual factors are consistent regardless of whether the person was widowed or married. Study limitations and implications for social work practice are discussed.