Complicated Grief, Unusual Perceptual Experiences, and Hope in Widowhood
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Abstract
The overall objective of this study is to assess grief in religious widows and hope, and the frequency of unusual perceptual experiences after the death of the spouse. It is hypothesized that (H1) religious widows will experience less complicated grief, (H2) greater hope, and (H3) higher frequency of unusual perceptual experiences than non-religious widows. Three instruments, the Complicated Grief Inventory, the Hope Scale, and the Hallucinations Questionnaire were administered to a sample consisting of religious widows and a control group (non-religious widows). The results showed that religious widows experienced less complicated grief than non-religious widows, and fewer feelings of pessimism about the death of the loved one. Religious widows who showed higher feelings of hope, compared to non-religious, tended to have fewer indicators of complicated grief. Furthermore, those religious widows who displayed feelings associated with remembering the deceased tended, for example, to hear voices and smell perfumes. It is possible that these occurrences may even be functional and adaptive to cope with the negative feelings of grief and loss, rather than resulting in a resource deficit mechanism for dealing with pain and hopelessness.
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