The influence of social support on AIDS-related grief reaction among gay men

Mary Clare Lennon · John Levi Martin · Laura A. Dean

76 citations0/0 files storedSocial Science & Medicine

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning HIV/AIDS Research and Interventions

Abstract

This paper examines the relationships between instrumental and emotional social support and the experience of grief reaction in a sample of 180 gay men who had lost a lover or close friend to AIDS during the first 5 years of the epidemic. Structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted in mid-1985. Grief reaction was assessed through a newly developed 12-item scale (alpha = 0.85). Availability and adequacy of instrumental and emotional support were assessed with reference to the tasks of caretaking and emotional pain experienced during the lover's or close friend's illness with AIDS. The findings indicate that gay men who lost a lover or close friend to AIDS experienced symptoms of grief similar to those reported in studies of bereaved spouses and parents. The intensity of these grief reactions appears to be influenced by a number of factors. First, more intense grief reactions were observed among those who had taken care of their lover or close friend during his illness compared with those who did not act as caretakers. Second, while the simple availability of instrumental and emotional support was unrelated to grief reactions, the perceived adequacy of both types of support was strongly related to the level of grief. Respondents who had received inadequate help with caretaking responsibilities experienced more intense symptoms of grief subsequent to the death compared with those who reported receiving adequate caretaking support. Similarly, respondents who did not obtain adequate emotional support for the pain they experienced during the course of the illness reported more intense symptoms of grief compared with those who felt they had received adequate support.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 76 citations exist upstream.

References

1976Social Support as a Moderator of Life Stress 1944SYMPTOMATOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT OF ACUTE GRIEF 1980Social Origins of Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women.1980Social Origins of Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women 1985Social Support: Theory, Research and Applications 1976Bereavement: Studies of grief in adult life 1982Neurosis and the Social Environment 1983Recovery from bereavement

Cited by

1993Themes of loss and dying in caring for a family member with AIDS 1994The health needs of gay men: a discussion of the literature and implications for nursing

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.