Psychiatry Interpersonal and Biological Processes

ISSN: 0033-2747 (Print) 1943-281X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upsy20

The Young Widow: Depressive Symptomatology Throughout the Grief Process Christina G. Blanchard, Edward B. Blanchard & Judith V. Becker To cite this article: Christina G. Blanchard, Edward B. Blanchard & Judith V. Becker (1976) The Young Widow: Depressive Symptomatology Throughout the Grief Process, Psychiatry, 39:4, 394-399, DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1976.11023909 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1976.11023909

Published online: 20 Oct 2016.

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The Young Widow: Depressive Symptomatology Throughout the Grief Process

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Christina G. Blanchard, Edward B. Blanchard, and Judith V. Becker THE PURPOSE OF this investigation was to examine patterns of abatement of depressive symptomatology in 30 young widows at three time periods: immediately following the death of the husband, a year later, and at present. Data on all three time periods were gathered during one interview. The study thus provides retrospective information on patterns of depressive symptomatology. It was expected that such information would enhance understanding of the stages of the grief process described by Glick et al. and by Maddison. Following the classic study by Lindemann on the symptomatology and management of reactions to grief, many studies have been conducted over the past 20 years on the psychological and physical problems of widowhood. Both retrospective and prospective studies .generally agree that although symptoms do decline over time, widows continue to show marked depressive symptomatology at least a year following the death of a spouse. 1 Clearly the grief process is longer and more complex than Lindemann thought. One important variable, found by several researchers (Glick et al.; Parkes, 1964; Maddison and Walker) to have an impact 1 See Marris; Maddison and Viola; Parkes, 1970; Parkes and Brown; Glick et al.; Bornstein et al.; Clayton.

on the severity of depressive symptomatology, is age at the time of bereavement, with younger widows showing more severe depressive symptomatology than older widows. In the studies of depressive symptoms of young widows, no studies have examined the time course of depressive symptomatology systematically and only one study has examined a time span longer than 13 months. Thus, while Glick et al. reported on the health of young widows during the first year of bereavement, no attempt was made to look systematically at the patterns of abatement of depressive symptoms. Parkes and Brown reported, however, that two to four years after the death of the spouse their sample of young widows did not differ significantly from the control group on items pertaining to

Dr. Christina Blanchard (PhD Purdue Univ. 71), formerly on the faculty at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences. Dr. Edward Blanchard (PhD Stanford Univ. 69), formerly on the faculty at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences. Dr. Judith Becher (PhD Univ. of So. Miss. 75), formerly on the faculty at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is Instructor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences. This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, MH-26630-01. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southeastern Psychological Association Meeting, Hollywood, Florida, 1975. 394

PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 39, November 1976

THE YOUNG WIDOW: DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMATOLOGY

health, including an overall depression score; no analysis of patterns of abatement of depressive symptoms was reported. METHOD

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Subjects A young widow was defined as a woman widowed before age 45. Names of potential respondents were obtained from personal contacts, from ministers and physicians, and, as the study progressed, from the respondents themselves. Each respondent was contacted by one of two female interviewers (CGB and JVB); one was a young widow herself (CGB). Only one of the women contacted refused to participate in the study. Of the final sample of 30 women, all but one were currently living in Jackson, Mississippi; the exception lived in another Mississippi city. The mean age of the women at the time of the husband's death was 29.9 years; the range was from 20 to 43 years. The couples had been married for a mean length of time of 8.7 years; the range was from less than a year to 23 years. For 2 women in the sample the husband's death had occurred less than a year before this study was done; for 2 the death had occurred 25 years ago. The mean time of the husband's death was 7.1 years ago. The widows were highly educated: 30% had done some graduate work, 43% had either a college degree or had completed a business or technical program, 17% had some college education, and 10% had completed high school. Slightly over half (57%) had worked prior to marriage; only 20% had not worked at some time during their marriage. Currently, 73% were working; of those not currently working only 5 did not wish to work. One-third held professional and technical jobs, 10% were managers or assistants, 20% held clerical jobs, 10% sales jobs, and the remainder (27%) were houseWIves. Seven ofthe widows had remarried. Only 5 (17%) of the 30 respondents had no children when their husbands died; they PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 39, November 1976

still have no children. Two had one child; 12 (40%) had two children; the remainder had more than two. Five of the widows currently live alone; half of them live with children; 7 live with new husbands and children; and the other 3 live with someone else. A question directed toward their current annual income revealed that 22% had an annual income of less than $10,000; almost half (47%) had an annual income of between $10,000 and $15,000; approximately 30% of the respondents reported higher incomes. Although a majority of the respondents were either comfortable financially or saw themselves as fairly wealthy, 37% reported feeling that they were just making ends meet financially or were rather short of money. With regard to religious affiliation, 80% stated they were Protestants, 13% Catholic, and 7% stated they had no religion. When asked how important religion was to them now, 73% said it was fairly or extremely important. This was reflected in their church attendance, as 80% attended church at least once a week. Some authorities, such as Lindemann, have suggested that anticipatory grief is related to adjustment to the death of a husband. Clayton et al. raised the question of whether the chance for grieving prior to bereavement makes postmortem grieving easier. They found that those of their sample whose spouses had a terminal illness for more than six months prior to death did worse the first month following bereavement than did those whose spouses had a short terminal illness (six months or less). However, the two groups were not different at the end of a year. Glick et al. reported that anticipating the husband's death made no difference in the initial grief reactions. However, over a period of a year they found a positive correlation between longer advance warning and eventual satisfactory adjustment to widowhood as indicated by feelings toward remarriage. Tn the present study, 16 widows were clllRRified fiR experiencing the sudden death 395

C. BLANCHARD, E. BLANCHARD AND J. BECKER

of their husband, as he had been ill a day or less prior to his death. For the remaining 14 widows, death of the husband was not classified as sudden.

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Procedure Data were collected in the fall of 1974. Each subject was interviewed for approximately two hours. The interview was tape recorded, and the interviewer also completed a semi-structured interview form during the course of the interview. As it was felt that discussion of the grief process might elicit some signs of pathological grieving, arrangements had been made for possible referrals to a clinical psychologist. However, no respondent manifested symptoms requiring such referral. The widows were asked how often they had experienced each of 20 symptoms thought to be associated with depression. The responses were coded as never, seldom, sometimes, often, or very often. The respondents were asked to state the frequency of each symptom at three time periods since the husband's death-a few weeks after his death, a year later, and at present. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Depressive Symptoms Separate analyses of variance showed significant differences (p < .05 or better) over time for all symptoms except suicidal behavior (see table). This means that the depressive symptoms experienced by young widows after the husband's death did decline from the few weeks following the death to a year later, and finally to the present time. Analyses showed no differences between the groups on the variable of anticipated or sudden death, except for suicidal thoughts. The 5 women who had considered suicide had not had the chance for anticipatory grieving (significant at the .03 level, by Fisher's exact probability test). It thus appears that with this exception, anticipa396

tory grieving does not significantly affect incidence of most depressive symptomatology; this confirms the results of Glick et al. Since this was a retrospective study, an important methodological issue was whether the reported frequency of depressive symptoms was related to the period of time since the death had occurred. One might speculate that for those who had experienced the death of a husband long ago, memory of the intensity of symptoms might have dimmed. Correlation coefficients calculated between number of years since the spouse had died and reported frequency of depressive symptoms at all times sampled were zero-order-there was no significant relationship between the two variables. In fact, none of the correlation coefficients at any time even approached the magnitude necessary for statistical significance. Perhaps the death of a husband is such a significant crisis event for a widow that her memory of her feelings of each stage remains clear and vivid in her mind. This finding certainly helps to validate the usefulness of retrospective studies. Another question concerned the relationship between the number of years the couple were married and the severity of depressive symptomatology over time. Correlational analyses showed no significant results for this relationship for the total sample. For those who had experienced sudden death of a spouse, however, the correlation of - .54 was significant (p < .05) at the initial time period studied. Thus , of those who .had experienced sud. den death, the seventy of response was lllversely related to length of time married; this suggests that coping with sudden death is more difficult initially for those who have been married for shorter lengths of time.

Patterns

of Abatement of Depressive Symptoms

Each of the symptoms showed a decline over time. The data were studied first by PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 39, November 1976

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The young widow: depressive symptomatology throughout the grief process.

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