IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v16y2019i19p3740-d273461.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“Let’s Talk About It”: The Moderating Role of Self-Disclosure on Complicated Grief over Time among Suicide Survivors

Author

Listed:
  • Yossi Levi-Belz

    (Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer 40250, Israel
    The Lior Tsfaty Center for Suicide and Mental Pain Studies, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer 40250, Israel)

  • Lilac Lev-Ari

    (Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer 40250, Israel
    The Lior Tsfaty Center for Suicide and Mental Pain Studies, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer 40250, Israel)

Abstract

Suicide often imparts highly stressful ramifications to those left behind. Previous research on suicide survivors (SUSs) has demonstrated their being at high risk for developing anxiety and depression, including pathological complicated grief (CG). Self-disclosure (S-D)––the tendency to share one’s personal feelings––has been found to be an important component of dealing with grief. In this study, we examined the effect of S-D on CG in an 18-month longitudinal design following one hundred fifty-six SUSs. We found that SUSs suffering from pathological CG at Time 1 (T1) were lower in S-D at T1 and T2 and higher in depression at T2. We also found that SUSs with lower S-D at T1 had higher CG at T2. Using a structural equation model, we found that S-D at T1 contributed significantly (and negatively) to CG at T1, above and beyond the natural fading of CG over time. Our findings emphasize that while CG is highly prevalent among SUSs, S-D has a beneficial effect which can serve as a protective factor against CG for this group. Implications regarding possible interventions with SUSs were discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Yossi Levi-Belz & Lilac Lev-Ari, 2019. "“Let’s Talk About It”: The Moderating Role of Self-Disclosure on Complicated Grief over Time among Suicide Survivors," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(19), pages 1-13, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:19:p:3740-:d:273461
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/19/3740/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/19/3740/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yossi Levi-Belz & Karolina Krysinska & Karl Andriessen, 2023. "What Do We Know about Suicide Bereavement, and What We Can Do to Help Suicide-Loss Survivors?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(8), pages 1-5, April.
    2. Yossi Levi-Belz & Tamir Ben-Yaish, 2022. "Prolonged Grief Symptoms among Suicide-Loss Survivors: The Contribution of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Characteristics," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(17), pages 1-16, August.
    3. Yossi Levi-Belz & Shai Birnbaum, 2022. "Depression and Suicide Ideation among Suicide-Loss Survivors: A Six-Year Longitudinal Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(24), pages 1-13, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:19:p:3740-:d:273461. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.