Studies // Cited work
The effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for bereaved persons: A comprehensive quantitative review
Currier, J. M., Neimeyer, R. A., & Berman, J. S. (2008). The effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for bereaved persons: A comprehensive quantitative review.
Level A Meta-analysis doi:10.1037/0033-2909.134.5.648
What this study supports
Supports the claims that interventions had a small effect at post-treatment and no significant benefit at follow-up overall, that interventions for people with marked difficulties had more favourable outcomes, and that untreated controls tended to improve over time. Older literature with mixed quality.
- Who was studied
- 61 controlled studies of psychotherapeutic interventions for bereaved persons.
- Design
- Meta-analysis
- Level of evidence
- Syntheses of controlled studies: meta-analyses and systematic reviews of experiments and trials.
Claims that rest on it
Each claim states what the site asserts, at what strength, and with what caveat.
EmpiricalLevel AConfidence MODERATE
Psychological interventions for grief show small average benefits, with little lasting benefit for unselected bereaved people and larger effects in trials that enrolled people with marked or high grief symptoms and in trials of people at least six months after the loss, which are separate study-level moderators.
- Scope
- Controlled and randomised trials of psychological interventions for bereaved adults.
- Caveat
- Trials were heterogeneous and of varying quality, with signs of publication bias; moderator findings compare studies rather than testing conditions directly.
Last reviewed · Review due · grief-interventions-work-best-when-targeted