The Integration of Stressful Life Experiences Scale and the Inventory of Complicated Spiritual Grief: The Italian Validation of Two Instruments for Meaning-Focused Assessments of Bereavement

Abstract

Background: Bereavement is an inevitable event that can cause pain, discomfort, and negative consequences in daily life. Spirituality and religiosity can help people cope with loss and bereavement. Sometimes, however, the death of a loved one can challenge core religious beliefs and faith, which has been found to be a risk factor for prolonged mourning. Objectives: (1) Determine whether the Italian versions of the Integration of Stressful Life Experiences Scale (ISLES) and Inventory of Complicated Spiritual Grief (ICSG) are valid in translation; (2) Evaluate the impact of socio-demographic variables on ISLES and ICSG dimensions; (3) Test whether Complicated Spiritual Grief mediates the relation between meaning reconstruction after loss and integration of the loss experience; (4) Test whether the representation of death as a form of passage or annihilation further moderated the relation between Complicated Spiritual Grief and integration of the loss. Methods: The sample is composed of 348 participants who had lost a loved person in the prior two years. Results: The ISLES and ICSG were validated in Italian and are more appropriately interpreted as having a unifactorial structure. A greater spiritual crisis was manifested in participants with less education, who did not actively participate in religious life, and who had lost a friend rather than a close relative. As hypothesised, spiritual struggle in grief mediated the role of continuing bonds, Emptiness and Meaninglessness, and Sense of Peace in predicting integration of the loss. Furthermore, death representation moderated the impact of spiritual grief on loss, such that those participants who viewed death as a form of annihilation rather than passage reported greater integration of the loss. Conclusion: The role of meaning making in integrating significant loss is partly accounted for by spiritual struggle in a way that can be analysed in Italian contexts through the use of these newly validated instruments.