ABSTRACT

Personality is a variable seldom considered in the adult grief process. This chapter creates potential personality profiles for grief response. Assessment of personality and its components is critical to evaluating complicated grief. There are many areas of assessment when considering a single grief reaction. Among those to consider are the nature of the loss, meaning of the loss, single or multiple losses, sudden or anticipated, grief history of the grieving person, support system, level of trauma around the loss, just to mention a few. Considering the variations in personality, it is safe to consider that there are an equal amount of variations in grieving. For the caregivers, a direction for care can be developed, along with appropriate suggestions and interventions to help facilitate grieving for the bereaved person. For the person grieving, a baseline of what is “normal” can be developed.