Lauren C Vanderwerker

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Rutgers

Bereavement is associated with heightened risk of mental and physical health impairments as well as social isolation. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of social support and technological connectedness on major depressive disorder (MDD), complicated grief (CG), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and quality of life. Participan...

Severe grief symptoms, treatment receptivity, attitudes about grief, and stigmatization concerns were assessed in a community-based sample of 135 widowed participants in the Yale Bereavement Study. There was a statistically significant association between the severity of grief symptoms and reported negative reactions from friends and family members...

Understanding referral patterns to chaplains is essential not only to ensure proper patient treatment, but also to assist chaplains seeking to expand the range of patient situations in which they are called to intervene. Information about more than 58,000 chaplain visits was documented during the first two years (2005-2006) of the Metropolitan Chap...

Analysis of Covariance was conducted on quantitative data collected by chaplains from January 2005 to December 2008. Data from 82 Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant chaplains, consisting of 53 CPE students and 29 professional chaplains were used in this study. Overall, chaplains exhibited a statistically significant higher rate of prayer with patient...

Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is experiential learning of the art and science of pastoral care. CPE students increase capacities in psychological strengths such as self-awareness and empathy, and improve skills in interpersonal and inter-professional relationships. Previous research has documented different kinds of change and experiences for s...

To determine the rates of psychiatric illness in next of kin following the death of a relative in a medical intensive care unit. Cross-sectional survey. A university teaching hospital, New Haven, CT. Forty-one next of kin who had served as primary surrogate decision makers before the death of their loved one in the intensive care unit 3-12 months p...

The current study examines patterns of referrals to chaplains documented in the 1994-1996 New York Chaplaincy Study. The data were collected at thirteen healthcare institutions in the Greater New York City area. Of the 38,600 usable records in the sample, 18.4% were referrals, which form the sample for the current study (N = 7,094). The most common...

The prevalence of Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) in non-Whites is currently unknown. This study was performed to explore the prevalence of PGD in African Americans (AAs). Multivariable analysis of two studies of recently bereaved individuals found AAs to have significantly higher rates of PGD than Whites (21% [14 of 66] vs. 12% [55 of 471], respect...

In recent years, the chaplain-to-patient ratio in U.S. hospitals has remained roughly the same while the role of the hospital chaplain has expanded. We compared data on 33,000 chaplain visits from the New York Chaplaincy Study (1994-1996) with 58,000 chaplain visits from the Metropolitan Chaplaincy Study (2005-2006), in order to explore whether cha...

Purpose: Over the past decade, Prigerson and her colleagues have shown that symptoms of 'complicated grief'-intense yearning, difficulty accepting the death, excessive bitterness, numbness, emptiness, and feeling uneasy moving on and that the future is bleak-are distinct from depression and anxiety and are independently associated with substantial...

Delirium, a common complication of advanced cancer, may put caregivers at risk for poor mental health outcomes. We looked for a relationship between caregiver-perceived delirium in a patient with advanced cancer and rates of caregiver psychiatric disorders. Using cross-sectional data from 200 caregivers of patients with cancer with a life expectanc...

Religion and spirituality play a role in coping with illness for many cancer patients. This study examined religiousness and spiritual support in advanced cancer patients of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds and associations with quality of life (QOL), treatment preferences, and advance care planning. The Coping With Cancer study is a federally fun...

Risk factors for suicidal ideation and attempts have been shown to differ between African Americans and Whites across the lifespan. In the present study, risk factors for suicidality were examined separately by race/ethnicity in a population of 131 older adult patients considered vulnerable to suicide due to substance abuse and/or medical frailty....

The purpose of this article is to describe the evaluations involved in the Yale Bereavement Study (YBS), a three-year NIMH and NCI-funded longitudinal study conducted from January 2000 through May 2003. The quantitative and qualitative questions included in the YBS gave the respondents an opportunity to describe their most recent loss, rate and rev...

Dependency among bereaved individuals has been hypothesized to be an important predictor of severe and enduring grief reactions. However, although there are a number of instruments that assess interpersonal dependency as a personality trait or style, no scales are available to assess bereavement-related dependency. Data from 170 widowed participant...

For patients confronting a life-threatening illness such as advanced cancer, religious coping can be an important factor influencing their quality of life (QOL). The study's main purpose was to examine the association between religious coping and QOL among 170 patients with advanced cancer. Both positive religious coping (e.g., benevolent religious...

Recent studies have suggested that the vulnerability to complicated grief (CG) may be rooted in insecure attachment styles developed in childhood. The aim of this study was to examine the etiologic relevance of childhood separation anxiety (CSA) to the onset of CG relative to major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and generalized...

To summarize, most bereavement experts agree that pathological grief exists. The motivation behind creating a diagnosis of CG was to identify the small percentage of bereaved people with the most distressing and disabling symptoms as a first step toward being able to understand their distress and to promote the ability of these individuals to cope...

The term demoralization has been used to describe existential distress and despair of patients with advanced disease. Aim: This study sought to determine whether a cluster of symptoms interpreted as demoralization could be identified and distinguished from a cluster of depressive symptoms. Materials and Methods: As part of the Coping with Cancer St...

Psychological morbidity has been proposed as a source of distress in cancer patients. This study aimed to: 1) determine the prevalence of diagnosable psychiatric illnesses, and 2) describe the mental health services received and predictors of service utilization in patients with advanced cancer. This was a cross-sectional, multi-institutional study...

Despite research demonstrating the psychological burden of caregiving for advanced cancer patients, limited information exists on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and mental health service use among these informal caregivers. Two hundred informal caregivers of advanced cancer patients were interviewed and administered the Structured Clinical...

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-59). Thesis (M.P.H.)--University of Pittsburgh, 2002. Graduate School of Public Health.