GENDER DIFFERENCES IN COMPLICATED GRIEF AMONG THE ELDERLY

The resolution of grief has been frequently posited to progress throug h stages. Seventy-one widows and twenty-six widowers bereaved from fiv e months to thirty-seven years were studied to determine if their reso lution of grief-related symptoms could be mapped onto a stage theory o f grief and to examine if men and women follow the same temporal cours e. An analysis of variance was used to test for differences in complic ated grief symptoms over time and between widows and widowers. Widower s bereaved three years or longer were found to have increased bitterne ss. By contrast, widows who were bereaved three years and beyond were found to have lower levels of complicated grief. These preliminary fin dings suggest that grief may not resolve in stages and that symptoms o f complicated grief may not decline significantly over time. Rather sy mptoms of complicated grief appear to remain stable at least for the f irst three years of bereavement for both men and women but, thereafter , among widowers tend to increase and among widows to decrease.