BACKGROUND: Pakistan’s largest city has been torn recently by sporadic and at times seemingly random and senseless violence. This study aims to determine the proportion of interviewed patients with clinically significant maladaptive grieving. Newly proposed criteria for “Traumatic Grief”(TG) will be assessed on bereaved patients.
METHOD: Consecutive patients whom the clinic psychiatrist (MMH) encounters who have lost a close relative within the past 12 months will be interviewed. The Inventory of Traumatic Grief (ITG) is a 34-item questionnaire designed to measure symptoms of psychic trauma and separation distress. 22 ITGs have been administered thus far and the study will be ongoing until 150 ITGs have been collected. The distribution of ITG scores, item-total correlations, and factor loadings will indicate the symptom severity of TG and provide information on which items best characterize TG in this sample. Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) analyses will determine item sensitivity and specificity with respect to meeting criteria for TG. Cronbach’s a will indicate the degree of internal consistency among the items. The proportion of patients who meet criteria for syndromal level TG will be determined and compared with rates obtained from other samples.
CONCLUSIONS: Results will suggest the face validity of the TG criteria in this sample, and allow for evaluation of the performance of the proposed items, and estimates of TG prevalence in a high-risk clinical sample. Comparisons with US bereaved samples will provide a basis for cross-cultural comparisons of reactions to loss, and of the performance of the TG criteria, more specifically.
Learning Objectives: The participant will be able to: 1. List the consensus criteria for Traumatic Grief. 2. Recognize the significane of traumatic grief in a highly vulnerable population. 3. Identify the possible cross cultural differences in reaction to loss
Keywords: Pakistan, Violence
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.