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Resilient or at Risk? A 4-Year Study of Older Adults Who Initially Showed High or Low Distress Following Conjugal Loss

¹ Lighthouse International, New York.
² Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
³ Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

Address correspondence to Kathrin Boerner, Lighthouse International, 111 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022. E-mail: kboerner{at}lighthouse.org

Following conjugal loss, some people show relatively little distress for the first several months, whereas others show considerable distress. In this article we examine these patterns over a 4-year period. Drawing on prior research defining grief trajectories, we conducted repeated measures analyses of variance on data from 92 bereaved elders with one preloss and three postloss assessments. Findings demonstrated that those with low initial distress continued to do well up to 4 years postloss. Differential findings among those who showed high distress initially and over time suggested that this pattern remained chronic only for those who had reported high distress preloss. Results underscore the need to refine the criteria used to identify those who are at risk for long-term problems.