[Support and counseling ease grief. An intervention project for recently bereaved elderly widows and widowers in...

Bereavement counselling at one, three and twelve months after bereavement was offered to a consecutive series of 50 newly widowed elderly Swedish citizens. House calls by a nurse were the most appreciated form of non-familial support. The nurse performed semi-structured, longitudinal interviews covering medical, psychological and socio-economic aspects of widowhood. The compliance rate was high (80 per cent), and the multidisciplinary examinations yielded an abundance of information suggesting, for example, that there was no increase in morbidity or mortality during the support period. Widow-to-widow groups were successfully established to provide help to self-help for other widows and widowers outside the project. The participants are to be reinvestigated after a further five years, to evaluate the longitudinal effects of early bereavement intervention.