Svitlana Liebiedieva
Ph.D. in Psychology, senior researcher
ORCID 0000-0002-8265-6956
DOI https://doi.org/10.52363/dcpp-2021.2.3
Keywords: loss, psychological crisis, death, experience, emotion
The article focuses on changes in people's mental state during the period of death of a loved one, taking into account age and gender. To this end, the analysis of recent research and publications on the mental state of a person experiencing grief due to the loss of a loved one, analyzed and highlighted the content of various changes in human life due to such loss, formed a research hypothesis and developed an author's questionnaire to verify its validity. The questionnaire was developed based on the assumption that respondents who have experienced the sudden loss of a loved one will be divided into two groups: the first - those experiencing complicated grief, and the second - those who have experienced loss in the normal mode. In this case, the type of grief is to some extent determined by time and depth of experience, and these criteria are not crucial in the empirical study of the complicated experience of a sudden loss of a loved one. Thus, in the study of the psychological characteristics of the experience of a sudden loss of a loved one, the criteria of complicated and average experience were chosen. The results of the empirical study presented in the article indicate the presence of insignificant differences in the experience of a sudden loss of a relative by respondents of different age groups and the dominance of complicated experience in female respondents. It is also emphasized that the outlined issues require a comprehensive and multilevel study of the impact of sudden death on the individual's psychological state, as this issue is complex in its structure. It is concluded that the criteria selected for the study are only part of the system and do not allow to form a holistic picture and indicate the feasibility of distinguishing respondents by the role of the deceased in the respondent's life and direct relationship to it.