The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: A Decade on

Complicated grief is a debilitating disorder associated with important negative health consequences, but the results of existing treatments for it have been disappointing. To compare the efficacy of a novel approach, complicated grief treatment, with a standard psychotherapy (interpersonal psychotherapy). Two-cell, prospective, randomized controlled clinical trial, stratified by manner of death of loved one and treatment site. A university-based psychiatric research clinic as well as a satellite clinic in a low-income African American community between April 2001 and April 2004. A total of 83 women and 12 men aged 18 to 85 years recruited through professional referral, self-referral, and media announcements who met criteria for complicated grief. Participants were randomly assigned to receive interpersonal psychotherapy (n = 46) or complicated grief treatment (n = 49); both were administered in 16 sessions during an average interval of 19 weeks per participant. Treatment response, defined either as independent evaluator-rated Clinical Global Improvement score of 1 or 2 or as time to a 20-point or better improvement in the self-reported Inventory of Complicated Grief. Both treatments produced improvement in complicated grief symptoms. The response rate was greater for complicated grief treatment (51%) than for interpersonal psychotherapy (28%; P = .02) and time to response was faster for complicated grief treatment (P = .02). The number needed to treat was 4.3. Complicated grief treatment is an improved treatment over interpersonal psychotherapy, showing higher response rates and faster time to response.

We used a stress and coping paradigm to guide the development of indices of coping responses and to explore the roles of stress, social resources, and coping among 424 men and women entering treatment for depression. We also used an expanded concept of multiple domains of life stress to develop several indices of ongoing life strains. Although most prior studies have focused on acute life events, we found that chronic strains were somewhat more strongly and consistently related to the severity of dysfunction. The coping indices generally showed acceptable conceptual and psychometric characteristics and only moderate relationships to respondents' sociodemographic characteristics or to the severity of the stressful event for which coping was sampled. Coping responses directed toward problem solving and affective regulation were associated with less severe dysfunction, whereas emotional-discharge responses, more frequently used by women, were linked to greater dysfunction. Stressors, social resources, and coping were additively predictive of patient's functioning, but coping and social resources did not have stress-attenuation or buffering effects.