OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying

The present longitudinal study aims to explain emotional and social loneliness experienced by older adults (N=99) during two-and-a-half years of widowhood. Utilization of multilevel analysis and a “visual” cluster analysis with prescribed classification criteria enabled us to search for average adaptational developments as well as individual variability in the adjustment process. Results were interpreted within the theory of mental incongruity. Adjustment to loneliness appears to develop along different individual-specific curves. About 30 percent of the bereaved had not adapted in two-and-a-half years to their loss in terms of emotional loneliness. Presence of favorable opportunities such as good health and high self-esteem as well as coping efforts like social behavior resulted in lower levels of emotional and social loneliness. It is concluded that the adjustment process among older bereaved does not exist. Moreover, including measures of cognitions and attitudes that are related to the relational needs and desires of widow(er)s may enlarge our knowledge of how older adults adapt to partner death.

This study examined the media's influence on 147 college students' views of death. Utilizing the revised Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale, the Incomplete Sentence Blank task, the NEO Five-Factor Inventory measure of Anxiety, the Byrne Repression-Sensitization Scale, and the Media Consumption Scale, a series of MANCOVAs indicated that greater death anxiety was related to the portrayal of group deaths in the media. Results indicated that in some cases, general references to death by the media may bring death fears into consciousness and have no effect on the unconscious, yet specific, real-life examples may increase both unconscious and conscious death fears. In general, conscious and unconscious death fears increased with greater death related media exposure.

Nursing home patients have a constitutional right to refuse treatment. The Patient Self-Determination Act confirmed that right. State laws address the obligations of health care providers and facilities to honor that right. The New York State law is more specific than those of many other states. It allows exemptions for “reasons of conscience” and imposes a number of requirements on nursing homes claiming such an exemption, including the transfer of a patient to a home that will honor an end-of-life wish. This study, conducted by FRIA,¹ investigated the refusal of some nursing homes in New York City to carry out patients' end-of-life wishes because of conscience-based objections. The study also investigated the willingness of homes which did not have such policies to accept patients transferring from a home with a policy so that the patient's end-of-life wishes would be honored. Implications for administrators, policy makers, and regulators are discussed.

The violent death of an adolescent or young adult child is a highly traumatic event for surviving families. A major family adaptation issue relates to individual differences in coping with violent death. This article reports the findings from four data collection points of parental responses over an 18-month time frame to an open-ended question about the difficulties experienced by surviving adolescent children after their sibling's death. The data show that parents reported that they perceived little change over time in their children's responses; surviving adolescents continued to have multiple grief reactions and behavioral changes up to two years after the sibling's death. There were parental role differences between mothers and fathers across time in the perceptions of sibling grief. Further research is needed to understand the sibling grief process following violent death and to develop nursing interventions to support bereaved families.

This study examined the relationship between childhood maternal loss and adult attachment quality among 30 motherless women and their matched controls. Motherless women reported significantly more anxiety and avoidance in their adult romantic relationships, despite the fact that two-thirds of them recalled positive relationships with their deceased parents. The role of perceived vulnerability to loss is discussed as a possible explanation, whereby motherless women may feel preoccupied with the potential loss of their spouses (anxiety) and protect themselves from future losses by disengaging from their spousal relationships (avoidance).