The Impact of Prolonged Grief on Meaning in Life among Young Widows (25-40 Year Old) in Kerala State, India

Page: 252-257
Molly U. Mundaden and Joy Tungol (The Graduate School, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines and Department of Psychology, The Graduate School, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines)

Grief is a natural response to a universal event of death. Spousal loss can affect an individual’s psychological, physical, and social state. To cope with this situation is very difficult 10-15% of grieving people extend complex reactions like depression, bereavement .included posttraumatic disorder, and prolonged grief disorder (PGD). Widowhood may be traumatic and the related personal variables, prolonged grief, and poor meaning in life in widows’ life are associated with an out-sized range of unfavorable physical and psychological states, results as well as psychological distress, high rates of morbidity, and mortality particularly within the initial year of the death of a spouse. This study is designed to determine the level, age, level of education, time of marriage, number of children, occupation, and period of widowhood influence widows’ grief and it extended to Prolonged Grief among young widows. A total of 247 young widows, ranging in age from 25 to 40 were selected purposively after consultation with the District Employment Exchange Officer and Director of KSSF’ (Kerala Social Service Forum). One Hundred and fifty (150) widows met the inclusion criteria and 123 volunteered to participate in the study. With their informed consent, they were requested to fill up the questionnaire for the study. Among them, a total of 123 widows were having a moderate level of prolonged grief symptoms and a low level of meaning in life. Two instruments namely; the Prolonged Grief Scale (PG-13) and Meaning in Life Scale (MLQ) are used as assessment tools. The data were analyzed by mean, standard deviation, and Pearson product-second relationships. All hypotheses were assessed at a significance level of 0.05 and a statistical package known as SPSS was identified for analysis. As with Pearson’s equality, the Results showed that widows who received a moderate Level of Grief are very different from their strategies for correcting the goal of being a widowhood meaning in life, based on age, access to education, duration of the marriage, number of children, duration of widowhood and occupation. The overall result clearly shows that there exists a relationship between prolonged grief and meaning in life among young widows and is significantly correlated with PG-13 level. It was concluded that when the prolonged grief increases it leads to very low meaning in life. That is negatively and significantly related as shown by the analysis significant. Based on the findings of this project, appropriate recommendations are made, one of which is that counselors can systematically use the corrective strategies learned in this study to help widows cope with life’s uncertainties.