Psychosocial functioning after losing a close friend in an extreme terror incident
Sammanfattning
Do candidate risk factors for complicated grief, and associations with other problems after
traumatic deaths (e.g., homicide, suicide, disaster, or accident), also apply to bereaved friends? In
this article we present results from a study on 76 bereaved friends’ situation after the killings at
Utøya 22nd July 2011, and focus on grief and trauma reactions, psychological distress and
psychosocial functioning. We observed that the bereaved friends, especially females, had high
levels of both grief and trauma reactions that affected functioning and ability to study/work. These
findings call for a broader perspective on who is affected when someone dies, and a recognition of
grief after the loss of a friend.