In one’s own time: Contesting the temporality and linearity of bereavement

This article explores the experience and meaning of time from the perspective of caregivers who have recently been bereaved following the death of a family member. The study is situated within the broader cultural tendency to understand bereavement within the logic of stages, including the perception of bereavement as a somewhat predictable and certainly time-delimited ascent from a nadir in death to a ‘new normal’ once loss is accepted. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with 15 bereaved family caregivers we challenge bereavement as a linear, temporally bound process, examining the multiple ways bereavement is experienced and how it variously resists ideas about the timeliness, desirability and even possibility of ‘recovery’. We posit, on the basis of these accounts, that the lived experience of bereavement offers considerable challenges to normative understandings of the social ties between the living and the dead and requires a broader reconceptualization of bereavement as an enduring affective state

Revisiting the Dexamethasone Suppression Test in unipolar major depression: an exploratory study

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

The role of temperament in posttraumatic growth following death of a loved one

The study investigates the role of temperament in posttraumatic growth among people who experienced a death of someone close. A group of 74 participants - mostly women (63.5%), aged 21 to 74 years (M=38.4; SD=15.5), who lost a parent, a child, a spouse or a partner, a sibling or a very close friend completed questionnaires measuring levels of posttraumatic growth (the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory) and temperamental traits (the Formal Characteristics of Behaviour - Temperament Inventory). Results revealed that increased appreciation of life and improved relations to others are the most prevalent areas of posttraumatic growth. Findings suggest that such temperamental traits, as emotional reactivity, and to a lesser extent briskness and endurance play significant role in posttraumatic growth