Does "Grief Work" Work?

Abstract

This article challenges the long-standing belief in the necessity of "grief work" for adjustment to bereavement. Evidence is offered from a prospective study of 30 widows and 30 widowers that indicates that grief work is not always as essential for adjustment to bereavement as theorists and clinicians have claimed. Widows who avoided confronting their loss did not differ in their depression scores from widows who worked through their grief. However, for widowers, performance of grief work was associated with better adjustment over an 18-month period. The implications of these findings for the grief work hypothesis are considered.