Affiliation:
1. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Abstract
Over 564,000 people died from an opioid-related overdose from 1999 to 2020. Minimal research has examined factors contributing to grief outcomes for the thousands of people mourning these stigmatized deaths. Informed by the model of resilience and transactional model of stress, this study investigated the degree to which disenfranchised grief, social support, and coping predicted grief outcomes in a sample of 159 people grieving an opioid-related death. When predicting prolonged grief, avoidant emotional coping (β = 0.55) alone accounted for unique variance. Active emotional coping (β = 0.28) and problem-focused coping (β = 0.40) explained unique variance in posttraumatic growth. These findings may inform research and clinical practice and improve grief outcomes for this vast, and understudied population.
Funder
University of Maryland Department of Psychology Graduate Office
University of Maryland Counseling Psychology Dr. Bruce R. Fretz Memorial Endowment Award
University of Maryland Department of Psychology Michael Patrick Kelley Award
University of Maryland College of Behavioral and Social Science Dean’s Research Initiative