Bereavement and depression: In this article, Freid wanted to assess how bereavement affected depressive symptoms. He explained that there are two basic schools of thought on how depression is caused. One school of thought is that depression is something that lies within the individual, dormant until something activates it. In this school of thought, symptoms are all just a way of describing depression. The other school of thought is that an event triggers a specific symptom of depression, and then the symptom activates more symptoms of depression. Fried wanted to know which of these two ideas better matched bereavement and the symptoms of depression.
Testing:
Fried and his colleagues analyzed these ideas by using data from the Changing Lives
…show more content…
For this study, Fried, et al. created two models to fit the data in to analyze. One model fit the common cause model, and the other model fit the common cause idea of depression, and the other one fit the system network of depression idea. The models all included: the latent variable (bereavement), symptoms of the latent variable, and variables that have an impact on the latent variable (Fried, et al. 2015). The first model created allowed spousal loss only to effect the latent variable, and the second model allowed spousal loss to affect specific symptoms. Whichever model fit better must better fit the connection between bereavement and depression.
Results:
Fried and his colleagues assessed both of the models with the data, and they found that model 2 better fit the data. Although model 2 fit the data more effectively, it still was not enough to explain the connection between bereavement and depression. Fried believes that this means there must be many factors that activate symptoms rather than just one studied in this case. Fried found that bereavement seemed to activate the symptom of loneliness, which then activated other symptoms such as sadness.
Clinical