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February 22, 2008 

Holly G. Prigerson et al.'s JAMA Article Makes Headlines

WASHINGTON, DC — Sociologist Holly G. Prigerson, an epidemiological researcher at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, was the lead author of JAMA's (Journal of the American Medical Association) article titled "An Empirical Examination of the Stage Theory of Grief," in the February 21, 2007, issue. The article featured her research on individuals’ changing experience of grief over time. Prigerson’s study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care Research, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Women’s Health Research at Yale University. Prigerson et al.'s bereavement research examined the process of grief and closely studied the different stages of mourning among subjects who had lost a close loved one as a result of natural death.

Prigerson’s article has received world-wide and wide-ranging national press coverage including articles in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and Reuters, and a segment on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program on February 20, 2007.

For more information, see the Dana-Farber press release. The article’s abstract and full text can be found on the Journal of the American Medical Association website, where you can also purchase the article.

To request an interview or comment, contact Sujata Sinha at (202) 247-9871 or via email at ssinha@asanet.org.

Journal of the American Medical Association article examines
counter-intuitive patterns and stages in the grief process

About the American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.