Bereavement in late life: coping, adaptation, and developmental influences

Abstract

"In late life, loss becomes more frequent and grief experiences accumulate. Older people must confront and cope with the loss of loved ones as they grapple with diminishing adaptive reserves, changes in cognitive and emotional functioning, patterns of social integration, loneliness, and financial risk. In these years, bereavement poses an array of difficult issues for coping, assessment, and intervention. Moreover, a significant subset of bereaved elderly individuals also appear to be at risk for problematic longer term health outcomes. The urgency of finding ways to help older people come to terms with bereavement events is increasing as the population ages. In what is certain to become a landmark volume, Hansson and Stroebe present a critical review of the literature and dominant theories in the field of bereavement and examine how protective and problematic developmental processes in late life affect the experience and outcomes of bereavement during those years. Given advances in our understanding of aging and bereavement, they argue for a new, more fine-grained understanding of how the processes of aging and bereavement interact to influence life outcomes, adaptive potential, coping capacity, and successful aging. The integrative framework they present offers therapists a strategy for helping patients cope that takes into account individual differences in the response to bereavement and the interaction of aging and development and addresses prior shortcomings in theory and gaps in the empirical Research"--jacket. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

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