Magnifying Grief

"Grief is a normal response to the loss of someone close, but traumatic losses may severely harm survivors for years."

"Our findings suggest that when treating trauma survivors, targeting symptoms of PTSD early might help them avoid complicated grief later on. Complicated grief has been defined as a persistent, intense yearning, longing and sadness, usually accompanied by insistent thoughts or images of the deceased and a sense of disbelief or an inability to accept the painful reality of the person's death."

"The fact that we found that PTSD symptoms predicted complicated grief reactions at a subsequent time point, but complicated grief did not predict the development of PTSD, is interesting because it suggests that targeting PTSD symptoms may hinder later development of complicated grief."

"This may have important implications for clinicians working with bereaved trauma survivors."

Kristin Alve Glad, researcher, Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies

Terrified youngsters hid in the woods, with some jumping into the water to escape the hail of bullets.  AFP

A new study placed its focus on survivors of the terrorist attack that took place in Oslo, Norway, and on the nearby island of Utaya in 2011, when 77 people lost their lives. This event -- a shooting spree combined with a bombing -- represented the deadliest attack to take place in Norway since the Second World War. Published in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, the research found symptoms of a more complex grief can intensify over time with the potential to prevent survivors from leading normal lives.

 

In most instances when people suffer a shocking loss such as the death of a loved one, the sorrow it brings tends to recede with the passage of time. However, those people who experience PTSD resulting from a traumatic event which directed involved/impacted them personally and that also claimed the life of someone near and dear, according to the study conclusions, may end up suffering from a persistent sense of sadness which leaves them with an inability to cope, years on.

 

A total of 275 people were interviewed for the study; of that number 256 had lost a close friend, six lost a family member, and thirteen lost a close friend and family member/partner. In face-to-face interviews conducted by health-care professionals on three separate occasions -- five months after the attack, 15 months later, and finally 30 months later -- participants were asked questions relating to symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

 

Other questions were asked with a view to revealing feelings of complicated grief; as example, those related to difficulty in accepting the loss, managing intense grief and coping with thoughts focusing on death. The researchers found that those who reported symptoms of PTSD to be significantly likelier to relay feelings of complicated grief; those who still felt the effects of PTSD a year following the event were seen to struggle with the most intense symptoms of this severe form of grief.

 

Survivors were seen to have taken on a particularly heavy toll of grief from the terrorist attack since while they lost loved ones, they were also participants in the traumatic event, the researchers found. Leading to the conclusion that the "dual burden" of unexpected loss in combination with high exposure to the event steered PTSD symptoms in the direction of complicated grief, not identified in those who were removed from the violence.

 

The hope is that this refined understanding of the relationship between PTSD and complicated grief may lead to assisting in the development of targeted therapies to be used in giving aid to survivors who have lost loved ones to unexpected trauma. 

Locals gathered boats near the island to try and help those jumping into the water to escape   AFP