Glossary // Glossary term Theoretical

Continuing bonds

An ongoing inner relationship with a person who has died, expressed for example in memories, inner conversations, keeping possessions or a sense of their presence. The concept challenged older views that mourning should end in detachment. Reviews note that whether and when continuing bonds are adaptive remains unclear, and attachment-based models have been proposed to predict it.

Where the site uses it

Grief and mourning rituals: what rituals do, and where grief becomes a clinical question
Most bereaved people adapt without professional help, and rituals after a loss were followed by lower grief in experiments. This note reviews rituals, continuing bonds and the dual process model, and marks the clinical boundary of prolonged grief.

Studies behind it

The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at.

Stroebe, M., Schut, H., & Boerner, K. (2010). Continuing bonds in adaptation to bereavement: Toward theoretical integration. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.007

Level D Theory

Supports the claim that whether continuing or relinquishing bonds is adaptive remained unclear in the literature and that an attachment-based model was proposed to predict when bonds help. Theory, not a test.