Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Adults in Communities With Mass Violence Incidents.

Importance: Mass violence incidents (MVIs) are prevalent in the US and can have profound and long-lasting psychological consequences on direct survivors, but their outcomes among the broader communities where the MVI occurred are unknown.

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of and factors associated with past-year and current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adults in communities that experienced an MVI.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional survey was completed between February and September 2020 with a household probability sample of adults from 6 communities that had experienced an MVI between 2015 and 2019: Dayton, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; Parkland, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; San Bernadino, California; and Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Prevalence and Co-Occurrence of Psychiatric Conditions Among Bereaved Adults.

Importance: Rates of grief-related psychiatric conditions, such as prolonged grief disorder (PGD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and major depressive disorder (MDD), among bereaved adults in the US are largely unknown due to limited studies that leverage national samples.

Objective: To assess risk factors for and prevalence rates and co-occurrence of PGD, PTSD, and MDD among bereaved adults in the US.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Data for this survey study were collected from a large US panel sample between October 10 and 28, 2022, using a web-based survey.

Predictors of Stigma, Guilt, and Shame among Adults Bereaved by Fatal Overdose.

With the spectacular rise of US overdose deaths, bereavement for these affected families has become a matter of increasing concern. Qualitative research has highlighted the role of stigmatization as well as guilt and shame among this population. However, the magnitude and pre-death predictors of stigmatization, guilt, and shame have yet to be assessed quantitatively.

Interventions for adult survivors of intrafamilial homicide: A review of the literature.

Individuals bereaved by intrafamilial homicide, in which the perpetrator and decedent were both members of the same family, experience an elevated risk for risk for mental health complications. Given the contextual complexity of intrafamilial homicide (IFH) and the negative sequalae this form of loss can engender, psychological interventions may assist survivors with adjustment on a number of fronts. This scoping review therefore addresses an important knowledge gap by summarizing the limited information on interventions specific to intrafamilial homicide survivors.

Measuring Grief in the Context of Traumatic Loss: A Systematic Review of Assessment Instruments.

Following traumatic loss, defined as the death of a loved one due to unexpected or violent circumstances, adults may experience a myriad of grief-related problems. Given the addition of Prolonged Grief Disorders into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders Fifth Edition, Text-Revision and influx of unexpected deaths due to the global Coronavirus pandemic, there is heightened interest in the measurement of grief-related processes. We conducted a systematic review according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines to identify measures of grief used in studies of adults who experienced traumatic loss.

Spirituality Influences Emotion Regulation During Grief Talk: The Moderating Role of Prolonged Grief Symptomatology.

A growing body of research demonstrates that religion greatly affects people's adjustment to loss. However, little is known about the influence of religiosity on emotion regulation during grief. The present study attempts to fill this void in the literature by examining the predictive relationship between variables assessing facets of religiosity and emotion regulation during an interview about loss in a sample of bereaved adults.

Personality and Grief-Related Panic Attacks: Analysis of Neuroticism, Worry, and Anxiety Sensitivity.

Grief-related panic attacks (GRPAs) are a relatively common yet debilitating psychological reaction to loss, the mechanisms of which remain poorly understood among scholars. The purpose of this study was to identify the personality traits that underlie GRPAs in a sample of 314 bereaved adults. The results indicate that GRPAs were relatively common (55.

Grief memoirs: The familiarity of helping professionals with the genre and its potential incorporation into grief therapy.

The grief memoir is a fast-developing genre that in recent decades has become a popular form of public mourning and self-therapy in many Western cultures, especially in the United States and Great Britain. We surveyed 76 helping professionals to assess if the grief memoir is a genre with which they are familiar and whether they employ such narratives as an adjunct in their work with the bereaved. Most bibliotherapeutic studies focus either on self-help or affective literature.

Investigating risk for grief severity: Attachment to the deceased and relationship quality.

Previous research examining the interrelationship between attachment, relationship quality, and bereavement outcomes suffers from a lack of precision and sophistication in the measurement of the core constructs of interest. The present study adapted an existing measure of attachment and employed a novel instrument of relationship quality to examine specific attachment to and relationship quality with the deceased as contributors to grief symptom severity. A sample of 385 bereaved college students completed measures retrospectively assessing relationship quality, attachment to the deceased, and grief symptomatology.

A concurrent examination of protective factors associated with resilience and posttraumatic growth following childhood victimization.

The present study concurrently examined protective factors associated with the adaptive outcomes of resilience and posttraumatic growth (PTG; defined as positive psychological change resulting from a life crisis or trauma), after accounting for relevant demographic factors and the impact of circumstances surrounding childhood victimization (i.e., age of first trauma, frequency of victimization, and perception of trauma severity).

Closeness and Conflict With the Deceased: Exploring the Factor Structure of the Quality of Relationships Inventory in a Bereaved Student Sample.

With mounting empirical evidence that interpersonal closeness and conflict with the deceased prior to death are significant predictors of grief reactions following loss, accurate empirical examination of these two constructs is of high importance. Despite the utility of the Quality of Relationships Inventory (QRI) in numerous domains of research, the original instrument was not constructed with a predeath, mourner-decedent relationship in mind. Therefore, this study clarified the factor structure of a modified QRI focusing on major dimensions of the predeath relationship with the deceased-dynamics that could have strong implications for the survivor's bereavement trajectory.

Domains of Social Support That Predict Bereavement Distress Following Homicide Loss.

Psychological adaptation following homicide loss can prove more challenging for grievers than other types of losses. Although social support can be beneficial in bereavement, research is mixed in terms of identifying whether it serves as a buffer to distress following traumatic loss. In particular, studies have not parsed out specific domains of social support that best predict positive bereavement outcomes.