Elevated Rates of Prolonged Grief Disorder in African Americans

Abstract

The prevalence of Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) in non-Whites is currently unknown. This study was performed to explore the prevalence of PGD in African Americans (AAs). Multivariable analysis of two studies of recently bereaved individuals found AAs to have significantly higher rates of PGD than Whites (21% [14 of 66] vs. 12% [55 of 471], respectively; p = 0.03). Experiencing a loved one's death as sudden or unexpected was also significantly associated with PGD over and above the effects of race/ethnicity. AAs may be at increased risk for the development of PGD. The development of effective interventions to treat PGD highlights the need to identify high-risk individuals and refer them to therapy and suggests the potential need for such therapies to adopt culturally sensitive approaches to care.

African Americans in Bereavement: Grief as a Function of Ethnicity

“…This finding is reinforced by the recent research of Goldsmith, Morrison, Vanderwerker, and Prigerson (2008), which also reports a higher rate of complicated grief for this ethnic group compared to Caucasians. Though further investigation is necessary to determine the underlying causes of this finding, current research suggests several risk factors.…”

“…A further limitation related to methodology concerns the Inventory of Complicated GriefRevised (ICG-R), which in its original form was derived from a sample of 97 participants who were primarily Caucasian, with only 4% described themselves as "nonwhite" (Prigerson et al, 1995). It may be that the construct being measured by the ICG-R has more to do with the way Caucasians experience grief than with the way African Americans and other cultural sub-groups experience grief, although it appears to be used meaningfully in studies including substantial African-American samples (e.g., Goldsmith et al, 2008;Shear, Frank, Houck, & Reynolds, 2005). Finally, although the focus on continuing bonds with the deceased was amenable to a spiritual interpretation, the fact that the study did not include an explicit measure of religious coping could be considered a limitation, insofar as this is a resource on which many grieving African Americans rely.…”

Complicated Grief in the Aftermath of Homicide: Spiritual Crisis and Distress in an African American Sample

“…Table 1 summarizes the descriptive statistics for the background variables, religious coping, and bereavement distress measures used in this study. With regard to bereavement outcome, these results show elevated levels of CG at T1 and T2 compared to young adults in Currier et al's [25] sample (M = 59.5; SD = 24.7), a subset of whom were homicidally bereaved (28%, n = 100), and elevated levels of depression at T1 and T2, compared to individuals suffering from community violence in Ramchand, Marshall, Schell, and Jaycox's [62] sample (M = 9.40; SD = 8.45). However, their PTSD scores were comparable to violently bereaved individuals (M = 37.3; SD = 12.9) in Bonanno et al's [21] study.…”

“…However, recent studies, using a variety of samples, show higher prevalence rates in vulnerable groups. These include samples of African American cancer caregivers, with CG rates of 22% [25], bereaved parents, with rates of 30% [26], victims of terrorism, with rates of 44% [27] and African American homicide survivors, with rates of 55% [28]. Although more research is needed, recent studies also have established violent death as a potential risk factor for CG [7,26,29] and have associated CG with a spiritual struggle in terms of meaning making regarding the loss [30].…”

Features of Prolonged Grief Symptoms in Chinese and Swiss Bereaved Parents

“…For clinical purposes, in recent years, the concept of PG-or the closely related prolonged grief disorder (PGD)-has become the particular focus of researchers and therapists (Boelen and Prigerson, 2007;Goldsmith et al, 2008;Maccallum and Bryant, 2013;Maercker and Lalor, 2012;Mancini et al, 2012;Prigerson et al, 2009). In the process of preparing the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) by the World Health Organization, a revised concept of PGD was proposed as a separate disorder belonging to the new category of "disorders specifically associated with stress," next to posttraumatic stress disorder and adjustment disorder (Maercker et al, 2013).…”