A Psychoendocrine Study of Bereavement

This study reports 17-hydroxycorticosteroid excretion rates of 40 parents during the 2 years following the death of their children from leukemia. Overall group mean rates remained unchanged, but this apparent stability was the result of an interaction between individuals with low rates during the child's illness, who significantly increased their rates at follow-up return visits to NIH, and those with high values pre-loss, who showed a significant decrease in rates during the post-loss period. A smaller number of collections made at home showed a general trend toward lower values at home than at NIH. This long-term study of subjects under two qualitatively different critical life situations indicates that each individual's chronic adrenocortical excretion levels can be significantly different during a period of impending object loss as compared to the period of mourning after that loss and that the direction of the difference is an important characteristic of the individual subject.