The National Archive of Grief Support Studies
The National Archive of Grief Support Studies(NAGSS) database provides bibliographical information and summaries of recent articles selected for their relevance to grief and bereavement service providers. The articles that are summarized are selected from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals and are intended to highlight key concepts as well as provide a brief statement of implications for service providers. Bibliographical information may be used to obtain the original article.
Screening for Complicated Grief: When Less May Provide More
Authors:
Piper, W. E.
Ogrodniczuk, J. S.
Weideman, R.
Source:
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry: 2005. Volume 50 (11), pp. 680-683.
Summary
The article summarizes the results of a study to discover screening questions for initial clinical interviews that would identify patients most likely experiencing complicated grief (CG). The study compared the responses of 235 psychiatric outpatients from two sets of questionnaire items. One set of questionnaire items was from the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (TRIG) that included items that have been found to be indicators or risk factors of CG. The second set of questionnaire items was derived using a factor analysis of items that have been proposed as elements of CG. The authors concluded that two items identified almost 90% of patients with CG. The first item was: “Pictures about it popped into my mind.” The second item was: “I tried not to think about it.” The authors suggest that these two items can be transformed into initial interview/assessment questions to screen psychiatric outpatients for CG.
Key words: complicated, prolonged, trauma
Service Provider Implications
This article suggests that a few, rather than many, selected questions in an initial clinical interview/assessment may be able to identify most psychiatric outpatients with Complicated Grief.
