The authors review the theory of romantic, or pair-bond, attachment as it was originally formulated by C. Hazan and P. R. Shaver in 1987 and describe how it has evolved over more than a decade. In ...

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Adult Romantic Attachment: Theoretical Developments, Emerging Controversies, and Unanswered Questions

In a longitudinal study of 253 bereaved adults, people with poorer social support, more concurrent stressors, and higher levels of postloss depression reported more rumination than people with better social support, fewer stressors, and lower initial depression levels. Women reported more rumination than men. People with a ruminative style at 1 month were more likely to have a pessimistic outlook at 1 month, which was associated with higher depression levels at 6 months. People with a more ruminative style were more depressed at 6 months, even after controlling for initial depression levels, social support, concurrent stressors, gender, and pessimism. Additional stressors and high depression scores at 1 month were also associated with higher levels of depression at 6 months. People who respond to the negative emotions aroused by stressful events by focusing passively and ruminatively on those emotions appear to be at risk for severe and prolonged periods of distress (Carver & Scheier, 1990; Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987). A number of questions about the relationship between passive, ruminative coping and adjustment to negative events remain, however. First, do some people consistently engage in passive, ruminative coping? Second, are there characteristics of people's environment that make it more likely they will engage in passive, ruminative coping? Third, what are some of the mechanisms by which passive, ruminative coping interferes with adjustment? Fourth, might ruminative coping mediate the effects of other well-known risk factors for depression, such as poor social support? We addressed these questions in a longitudinal study of peo- ple coping with the recent death of a loved one after a serious illness. Bereavement provides a rich context in which to study emotion-focused coping because the event arouses strong emo- tions, but people differ in the duration of these emotions (Os- terweis, Solomon, & Green, 1984). In addition, because the loss of a loved one to an illness is an uncontrollable event, we can study strategies for coping with the emotions aroused by this event without being concerned that these coping strategies actu-

Ruminative coping with depressed mood following loss.

When stresses and hassles challenge our abilities to cope, we frequently turn to family, friends, and partners for help. Yet social support from close relational partners does not uniformly benefit recipients or their relationships. By probing the communication processes that link enactments of social support to participants' reactions, this book provides new explanations for when and how receiving social support will be evaluated as helpful and relationally satisfying. The author's research addresses a variety of types of relationships and stresses, including young adult friends and romantic partners coping with the stresses of university life; adult friends, family and spouses responding to everyday hassles' and married couples coping with chronic health conditions. This innovative program of research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to develop a distinctive communication-based framework for understanding why the content, form, style, and sequence of talk matter for our evaluations of the help we receive from others.

Communicating Social Support

The study examined how social constraints on discussion of a traumatic experience can interfere with cognitive processing of and recovery from loss. Bereaved mothers were interviewed at 3 weeks (T1), 3 months (T2), and 18 months (T3) after their infants' death. Intrusive thoughts at T1, conceptualized as a marker of cognitive processing, were negatively associated with talking about infant's death at T2 and T3 among socially constrained mothers. The reverse associations were found among unconstrained mothers. Controlling for initial level of distress, there was a positive relation between T1 intrusive thoughts and depressive symptoms over time among socially constrained mothers. However, higher levels of T1 intrusive thoughts were associated with a decrease in T3 depressive symptoms among mothers with unconstrained social relationships.

http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/cwortman-/papers/Lepore_Silver_Wortman_Wayment_1996_.pdf

Social constraints, intrusive thoughts, and depressive symptoms among bereaved mothers.

Receiving positive social support after a trauma generally is related to better adjustment to the trauma. The personality of trauma survivors may affect the extent to which they seek social support, their perceived receipt of social support, and the extent to which they benefit from social support. The authors hypothesized that people with a ruminative coping style, who tended to focus excessively on their own emotional reactions to a trauma, compared to those without a ruminative coping style, would seek more social support, and would benefit more from social support, but would report receiving less social support. These hypotheses were confirmed in a longitudinal study of people who lost a loved one to a terminal illness.

"Thanks for sharing that": Ruminators and their social support networks.

Spousal bereavement involves a social network crisis. The individual's response is influenced by prebereavement personality factors and preexisting social network characteristics. The impact of the loss on the individual and other network members, and the presence or absence of concurrent stressors, will determine the “goodness of fit” between the support offered and the needs of the bereaved and perception of the environment as helpful or unhelpful. An inadequate social network is associated with high distress over the course of bereavement. Intervention aimed at increasing social support can decrease the distress of bereavement.

Stanley K. Stylianos

Papers

The Role of Social Support in Bereavement

Handbook of bereavement: The role of social support in bereavement