A NARRATIVE BASED BEREAVEMENT INTERVENTION

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Some controversy exists as to whether grief has adverse health, social, or economic risks for people. Some studies have shown that the loss of a loved one affects all aspects of a person's life and causes considerable suffering. Other studies have shown that within two years bereaved people are indistinguishable from those who are not bereaved. However most of the studies have demonstrated that the first six months or year of bereavement is a difficult time for almost all grieving people. One premise of this study is that grieving people will benefit from early intervention and can be helped in dealing with their grief. Another premise of the study is that bereavement is a challenge to a person's sense of meaning in life. People must take on the task of finding meaning in a significant loss. Meaning making in Western Culture is generally done through the use of narratives. That is, people come to understand the meaning of their lives by constructing a narrative about who they are. The aim of the present study is to help bereaved people with their personal narratives after a significant loss. Aims: to test whether a group of bereaved people receiving a narrative-based intervention will deal with bereavement quicker and more completely than a group receiving normal care. Design: This will be a two-group experimental design. Sample: Over a two-and-a-half-year period, bereaved people will be identified through the UVa Health Sciences Center, Office of Decedent Affairs. They will be asked via a letter to return a post card or to call the investigators if they wish to be in the study. The recruitment will continue until 160 people have volunteered for the study. Procedure: As people are recruited into the study, they will be randomly assigned into two groups. The control group, who will not receive the intervention but will be encouraged to seek care as they see fit, "normal care", and the treatment group who will receive the intervention. Intervention: The intervention will consist of nine visits over a six-month period from a person specially trained to listen in such a way and ask questions in such a way as to help people construct a meaningful personal narrative around the events in their lives. Data Collection and Analysis: Both qualitative and quantitative data (questionnaires) will be used to determine the extent to which subjects in both groups are successfully dealing with bereavement.