Similarities and Differences in the Process of Bereavement after Suicide and after Traffic Fatalities in Slovenia

Abstract

The authors present the results of a study in which the bereaved spouses of deceased after suicide (30) and after traffic fatalities (23) were compared. Participants from each group were visited twice—two months after and fourteen months after the loss. The structured interview and three other instruments (Beck Depression Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and Slovene Bereavement Scale) were applied by experienced and especially trained interviewers. The results show more similarities than differences between the groups. We found that the mode of death in our sample does not influence the level of depression. EPQ scores showed no significant differences on either dimension. There are some subtle differences on some questions on the SBS, which suggest that suicide survivors have more problems shortly after the death than do the bereaved after traffic accidents. Our data showed that the process of bereavement is influenced not only by the mode of death and the time that has passed between the loss and the interview, but also by the quality of spousal relationship—whether it was a satisfactory or an ambivalent one.

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