Living With Loss: Middle-Aged Men Face Spousal Bereavement

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2002

Department

Nursing

Abstract

Spousal bereavement is one of the most profoundly disturbing events encountered in the human lifespan. Research has shown that conjugal bereavement has significant physical and psychological consequences for the surviving spouse. In American culture, men and women experience bereavement in different ways. The author used in-depth interviews in the tradition of phenomenology to collect data from 8 men aged 41 to 54 years who had experienced the death of their spouse within the previous 8 months to 6 years. The research revealed the lived experience of spousal bereavement to be a journey from the realization of irreconcilable loss through themes of responding to the loss and living through the loss toward reclamation and reconstruction of a life.

Publication Title

Qualitative Health Research

Volume

12

Issue

5

First Page

625

Last Page

639

Link to Full Text

Find in your library

Share

COinS