Depressive symptoms, grief, and complicated grief among family caregivers of patients with advanced cancer three months into bereavement.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: to describe depressive symptoms, grief, and complicated grief for bereaved family caregivers of patients who died from cancer-related causes and to explore relationships among these variables.

DESIGN

a nonexperimental, secondary analysis of cross-sectional descriptive data from a longitudinal intervention study evaluating the effect of providing feedback from standardized assessment tools.

SETTING

two large, private, not-for-profit hospices in Florida.

SAMPLE

convenience sample of 280 family caregivers, bereaved three months.

METHODS

secondary analysis of self-report, survey data three months following death.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES

depressive symptoms, grief, and complicated grief.

FINDINGS

Three months after the loss of a loved one, 34% of the caregivers had clinically meaningful scores for depressive symptoms. A significant number of bereaved caregivers were experiencing grief and depression.

CONCLUSIONS

bereaved caregivers were experiencing significant levels of depressive symptoms and complicated grief. Caregivers with higher levels of grief had more depressive symptoms.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING

tools are available to identify bereaved caregivers most in need of intervention.