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A Sense of ‘unrealness’ about the death of a loved‐one: An exploratory study of its role in emotional complications among bereaved individuals
Author(s) -
Boelen Paul A.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1557
Subject(s) - ambivalence , psychology , cognition , grief , depression (economics) , exploratory research , psychology of self , developmental psychology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , psychotherapist , psychiatry , sociology , anthropology , economics , macroeconomics
After a loss, some people develop complicated grief (CG) and depression. A recent cognitive‐behavioural model postulates that three processes account for such problems: (a) lack of integration of the loss with implicit autobiographical knowledge about the relationship with the lost person, (b) negative cognitions and (c) avoidance behaviours. In the current study, it was proposed that the ‘lack of integration of the loss’ is mainly an implicit process, but has an explicit, introspectively accessible counterpart in the form of ‘a sense of unrealness’ that can be defined as a subjective sense of uncertainty or ambivalence about the irreversibility of the separation. The role of this ‘sense of unrealness’ was studied using self‐reported data from 397 mourners. Among other things, findings showed that items constituting unrealness were distinct from those of CG and depression. In addition, unrealness was significantly associated with CG, when controlling for negative cognitions, avoidance and concomitant depression. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.