Anticipatory grief and aged widows and widowers.

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the preventive value of anticipatory grief on the medical adjustment of the aged bereaved. Data were collected for 81 surviving widows and widowers 6 mo. after their loss. Sixteen of the bereaved had spouses who died of a chronic illness. These two groups were compared on three criteria of medical adjustment: physician office visits, feeling ill without contacting a physician, and use of psychotropic medications. The data indicated that the aged bereaved of a lengthy chronic fatal illness did worse than the bereaved of a shorter chronic illness death. By sex, no significant differences were found between widows and widowers of a short-term illness death. However, differences were noted for the chronic illness category, and within this category for length of chronicity. In both cases widowers showed more medical problems than widows.