Depressive Symptoms, Grief, and Complicated Grief Among Family Caregivers of Patients With Advanced Cancer Three Months Into Bereavement

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: to describe depressive symptoms, grief, and complicated grief for bereaved family caregivers of patients who died from cancer-related causes and to explore relationships among these variables. DESIGN: a nonexperimental, secondary analysis of cross-sectional descriptive data from a longitudinal intervention study evaluating the effect of providing feedback from standardized assessment tools. SETTING: two large, private, not-for-profit hospices in Florida. SAMPLE: convenience sample of 280 family caregivers, bereaved three months. METHODS: secondary analysis of self-report, survey data three months following death. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES: depressive symptoms, grief, and complicated grief. FINDINGS: Three months after the loss of a loved one, 34% of the caregivers had clinically meaningful scores for depressive symptoms. A significant number of bereaved caregivers were experiencing grief and depression. CONCLUSIONS: bereaved caregivers were experiencing significant levels of depressive symptoms and complicated grief. Caregivers with higher levels of grief had more depressive symptoms. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: tools are available to identify bereaved caregivers most in need of intervention.