Our new paper “From Loss to Loneliness: The Relationship Between Bereavement and Depressive Symptoms” was just published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (PDF).
In the paper we examined a prospective cohort of 515 individuals, half of which would experience spousal loss throughout the course of the study (the other half was queried as control group). We then examined the impact of bereavement on depression symptoms. Novel network models indicated that bereavement mainly impacted on loneliness, which in turn activated other depressive symptoms. Our findings support a growing body of literature showing that specific adverse life events differentially affect depressive symptomatology, and suggest that future studies should examine interventions that directly target such symptoms.
» Fried, E. I., Bockting, C., Arjadi, R., Borsboom, D., Tuerlinckx, F., Cramer, A., Epskamp, S., Amshoff, M., Carr, D., & Stroebe, M. (2015). From Loss to Loneliness: The Relationship Between Bereavement and Depressive Symptoms. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.