Individuals with intense and sustained grief following the death of a relative use more mental health services and are more likely to die within 10 years compared with peers experiencing low levels of grief, according to a study published in Frontiers in Public Health.
Mette Kjærgaard Nielsen, M.D., Ph.D., of the Research Unit for General Practice in Aarhus, Denmark, and colleagues examined the health outcomes of 1,735 adults who had initially been contacted in 2012; at that time, all the individuals had a close relative (such as a spouse or parent) with a terminal illness. Using the Prolonged Grief-13 (PG-13) scale, participants had filled out measures of their grief symptoms at baseline and again six months and three years after their loved one’s death. Nielsen and colleagues used Danish health registry data to track participants’ use of mental health services (talk therapy and/or psychotherapy) and psychotropic medication for up to 10 years or their death.
Based on PG-13 scores over three years, participants were placed in five grief categories: consistently low (n=670), initially moderate then decreasing (526), initially high then decreasing (310), late onset (122), and consistently high (107).
Compared with individuals in the consistently low grief group, those in the consistently high group were 2.9 times as likely to use mental health services, 5.6 times as likely to receive an antidepressant prescription, and 2.6 times as likely to receive an anxiolytic or sedative prescription. Individuals with initially high grief were also more likely to receive antidepressants, anxiolytics, or sedatives than the consistently low group, but did not have additional mental health service use. Further, the researchers found that individuals in the consistently high grief group were nearly twice as likely to die during the follow-up period as those in the consistently low group.
“The present study establishes that individuals most likely to receive excess health care services beyond three years after bereavement were those with high levels of persistent grief symptoms,” Nielsen and colleagues wrote. “Hence, the available services seem to be directed at those with the most severe symptoms. However, the persistent need for mental health service over a long-term period could indicate that the existing interventions may not be sufficient to address the needs of bereaved relatives.”
For additional information, see the Psychiatric News Special Report “Prolonged Grief Disorder—What You Need to Know.”
(Image: Getty Images/iStock/fizkes)
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