title: The centrality of a loss and its role in emotional problems among bereaved people.
abstract: In literature on posttraumatic stress-disorder (PTSD) there is growing interest in the concept "centrality of event", referring to the degree to which the memory of a traumatic event is central to one's everyday inferences, life-story, and identity. Using self-reported data from 254 bereaved individuals, this study examined the centrality of the loss-event in emotional problems following loss. Findings showed that this centrality (a) varied as a function of kinship to the deceased but not other loss-related variables, (b) was correlated with complicated grief (CG), depression, PTSD, and with neuroticism and several cognitive-behavioural variables, and (c) remained correlated with CG but not depression and PTSD when controlling for the shared variance between these symptoms, neuroticism, and these cognitive-behavioural variables.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. p.a.boelen@uu.nl
authors.forename: Paul A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Boelen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000523:psychology*; D001601:Bereavement; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010551:Personality; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology