Examining the role of trauma, personality, and meaning in young prolonged grievers

Purpose Younger spouses or partners have been understudied in the prolonged grief literature. The purpose of this study was to determine rates of prolonged grief in young spouses or partners and the associations between prolonged grief and personality styles (specifically, narcissistic, histrionic, and obsessive), trauma history, and the perceived meaning of the loss in the young conjugally bereaved. Participants and method Participants between 20 and 50?years old who lost a spouse/partner to cancer 6?months3?years prior to the study completed the following measures during one time point (via phone or in person interviews): Prolonged Grief-13, Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III, and Grief Meaning Reconstruction Inventory. Results Fifty-six spouses and partners (51.8% women) completed the interviews (mean age: 44.54 +/- 4.20?years). The participants (49.1%) reported elevated rates of prolonged grief and 12.3% of the participants were diagnosed with prolonged grief with the recently published diagnostic algorithm. Bivariate analyses demonstrated an association between prolonged grief and negative meaning of the loss (r?=?0.73; p?