The Consequences of Widowhood for Depression in the Short- and Medium-Term across European Countries

Widowhood is a common yet critical life event, associated with significant risks to mental health. This study aims to understand the individual and contextual factors that may moderate the short-term decline in mental health and recovery in the medium-term associated with widowhood. Data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe are applied to between-within random-effects linear regressions to estimate average within-individual change in mental health following spousal death across fifteen countries. Rather than a summary score of depressive symptoms, this study focuses on affective suffering and changes in motivation. This allows us to differentiate between depressive symptoms that manifest in the course of bereavement (affective suffering) and symptoms that indicate a more severe depressive episode (changes in motivation). In addition, we consider the role of institutional, social and compositional differences between countries to account for cross-national variation. Widowhood is associated with higher affective suffering in the short-term and recovery in the medium-term across all countries. However, there is more cross-national variation in the appearance of changes in motivation following spousal loss. Findings suggest that compositional differences, specifically the mean age of widowhood and the gender composition of the widowed population, account for cross-national heterogeneities in the consequences of widowhood for affective suffering and motivation.