Late life is a time when loss becomes more frequent. Grief experiences accumulate as many older people grapple with diminishing adaptive reserves, changes in cognitive and emotional functioning, patterns of social integration, loneliness, and financial risk. In these years, bereavement poses an array of difficult issues for coping, assessment, and intervention.
In what is certain to become a landmark volume, Hansson and Stroebe present a critical review of the literature and dominant theories in the field of bereavement and examine how protective and problematic developmental processes affect the experience of bereavement in late life. They argue for a new, more fine-grained understanding of how the processes of aging and bereavement interact to influence life outcomes, adaptive potential, coping capacity, and successful aging. Finally, in a series of specific proposals, the authors present a path for future research on the bereavement experiences of older adults.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- The Nature of Grief
- Coping With Bereavement
- The Dual Process Model of Coping With Bereavement and Development of an Integrative Risk Factor Framework
- Aging and Bereavement: Introduction
- Aging and Bereavement: Outcomes
- Aging and Bereavement: Risk Factors and Resources
- Protective Developmental Processes
- Problematic Developmental Processes
- Integrating Aging and Bereavement in Late Life
Appendix A: Assessment and Intervention Issues With Older Adults
Appendix B: Gerontological Resources for Bereavement Researchers and Practitioners
References
Author Index
Subject Index
About the Authors
Robert O. Hansson, PhD, is McFarlin Professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He earned his PhD from the University of Washington. His research interests focus on successful aging, aging families, and bereavement. In addition to his previous publications with Margaret S. Stroebe, he is coauthor (with B. Carpenter) of Relationships in Old Age: Coping With the Challenge of Transition (1994). He served on the Scientific Advisory Committee on Bereavement for the Center for the Advancement of Health and is a member of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement and a member of the Gerontological Society of America's special interest group on death, dying, and bereavement. He is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and has served on the editorial boards of four journals, spanning the fields of aging, relationships, and loss.
Margaret S. Stroebe, PhD, is associate professor of psychology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She received her PhD at the University of Bristol, England, and an honorary doctorate in 2002 from the University of Louvain-la- Neuve, Belgium. Her research interests include theoretical approaches to grief and grieving, interactive patterns of coping with bereavement, and the efficacy of bereavement intervention. She is coeditor (with R. O. Hansson, W. Stroebe, and H. Schut) of the Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences, Coping, and Care, published in 2001 by the American Psychological Association; coeditor (with W. Stroebe and R. O. Hansson) of The Handbook of Bereavement: Theory, Research, and Intervention (1993); and coauthor (with W. Stroebe) of Bereavement and Health (1987). She received the Scientific Research Award of the American Association for Death Education and Counseling in 2002.
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