If You Participate

If you are interested in participating in the Complicated Grief Treatment in Older Adults Study, we will talk with you over the phone and ask you questions about yourself and your grief. If the study seems like a good fit for you, we will invite you to our clinic for a more extensive interview and a medical evaluation to determine your eligibility for participation. This also provides an opportunity for you to meet us and learn about what it is like to participate in treatment research. If you are not eligible, or if you decide you don’t want to participate, we will help you find an appropriate referral.

If you are eligible for the study and you want to continue, you will receive 16 sessions of weekly one-on-one psychotherapy. The type of treatment you receive will be determined by chance: a computer program decides which treatment you will receive. The program is written so that you have an equal chance of being assigned to the experimental treatment or to the standard treatment. We expect both treatments to help you.

In addition to participating in treatment sessions, we will ask you to complete a comprehensive assessment protocol as part of our study. These assessments are used to evaluate your progress. Assessment procedures are ongoing throughout the treatment period and continue after treatment is over. We will ask you to complete a short battery of forms at each treatment session. In addition, a member of our assessment team will phone you periodically to ask about your symptoms. These phone assessments will continue until about a year after your first evaluation visit. You will be asked to return to the clinic for a final visit about one year after starting treatment.