Health Of Widows Research Articles

The Effect of Remarriage on Mental Health of Widows of the Killed-in-Action versus Other Widows

Introduction: The main aims of this study are to compare widows of the killed-in-action (KIA) regarding the rate of remarriage, basic preventive factors of remarriage, the affective factors on marital adjustment, the rate of marital adjustment, and finally the variables which are related to marital adjustment. Method: Participants were 450 widows (207 usual widows whose husbands have died, and 243 KIA widows) who were randomly selected from Tehran. The assessment measures used were the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SC-90-R), a researcher-made questionnaire, and the Enrich marital satisfaction questionnaire. Result: The results showed that 24.5% of widows (both groups) had remarried, 36% of remarried widows had marital maladjustment, and 16% of them were on the verge of separation. Also, the results indicated that the age of widows was the only variable correlated with the marital adjustment. Other variables such as martyrdom, education, family relationship with the present spouse, and marital status of the present husband did not have a significant correlation with their marital adjustment. The major factors preventing widows to remarry were: worries about the future of their children, lack of motivation for remarriage, not finding an appropriate man, and loyalty to their previous husbands. Results also showed that the major symptoms among unmarried widows are somatoform disorder, obsession, depression, anxiety and paranoid ideation. These symptoms were more prevalent in ordinary widows than in KIA widows.

Nursing Research on the Health of Widows

What can one do with a scholarly research project? Shall it sit in a library, to be read only by other scholars? Is it to profit only the investigators who get academic capital from the study? Coping and Health Among Older Urban Widows was a cross-cultural, longitudinal study of how Anglo and Mexican-American widows coped with bereavement and how their coping styles related to their health. The study was awarded to the Southwestern Institute for Research on Women (SIROW) at the University of Arizona and conducted by a team representing several disciplines: anthropology, gerontology, nursing, medicine, sociology, and social work. Here I want to discuss practical applications of our findings. I think that grant recipients must show how to convert into practice what they learned when they followed the careful scientific process that made the award possible. The National Institute of Aging awarded approximately a quarter of a million dollars to this study.

The health of widows in the year following bereavement

Much has been written during the past decade about the mortality and morbidity which may follow conjugal bereavement [1–4]. Existing studies of morbidity do not however enable us to draw any substantial conclusions about the prevalence of such consequences in widows and widowers. Either the population of bereaved persons has been a highly selected one, commonly available for study because they have been referred for psychiatric treatment, or there has been no utilization of a non-bereaved control group, the desirability of which is heightened by the tendency towards some deterioration in physical and mental health in middle age [5]. This present study developed as one segment of a major research endeavour, aimed ultimately at the identification in advance of those widows most likely to suffer untoward physical and/or psychological consequences following conjugal bereavement [6]. Our major focus has been on the subject's interaction with her social network during the three months immediately following the bereavement [7], the whole study being conceptualized within the framework of crisis theory [8]. Our findings on the health of widows, however, were of such interest that it seemed worthwhile to examine suitably matched control groups in order to determine more truly the prevalence of health deterioration following bereavement. As well as information about the overall prevalence of health deterioration in two samples of widows, one in Boston, Massachusetts and the other in Sydney, Australia, our techniques also enabled us to gather information about the specific symptoms and syndromes manifested by the subjects and the matched controls.