The centrality of a loss and its role in emotional problems among bereaved people

In literature on posttraumatic stress-disorder (PTSD) there is growing interest in the concept “centrality of event”, referring to the degree to which the memory of a traumatic event is central to one's everyday inferences, life-story, and identity. Using self-reported data from 254 bereaved individuals, this study examined the centrality of the loss-event in emotional problems following loss. Findings showed that this centrality (a) varied as a function of kinship to the deceased but not other loss-related variables, (b) was correlated with complicated grief (CG), depression, PTSD, and with neuroticism and several cognitive-behavioural variables, and (c) remained correlated with CG but not depression and PTSD when controlling for the shared variance between these symptoms, neuroticism, and these cognitive-behavioural variables.