Examining the delayed grief hypothesis across 5 years of bereavement

Traditional bereavement theories emphasize that it is crucial to work throu gh the emotional meanings of a loss and that the failure to do so typically results in delayed grief symptoms. This article reports data examining the se assumptions prospectively across the first 5 years of bereavement. Based on previous validity data, elevated symptoms were defined in terms of 6-mo nth median scores for each measure. Delayed elevations were observed on iso lated measures for 3 (7%) participants. However; these elevations were more parsimoniously explained by random measurement error. Furthermore, when a weighted grief-depression composite score was used to maximize the probabil ity of capturing the true (latent) grief variable, not a single case of del ayed symptom elevations was observed Finally, data on emotional processing of the loss at 6 months failed to support the traditional assumption that m inimal emotional processing of the loss would lead to delayed grief.