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Cultural norms may dictate how grief is displayed. The present study explores the display behaviours and rules in the bereavement context from a cross-cultural perspective. 86 German-speaking Swiss and 99 Chinese bereaved people who lost their first-degree relative completed the adapted bereavement version of the Display Rules Assessment Inventory. Results indicated that the German-speaking Swiss bereaved displayed more emotions than the Chinese bereaved. The Chinese bereaved, but not the German-speaking Swiss bereaved, thought that bereaved people should display more emotions than they actually did when they were with their close others (but not when they were alone). Bereaved people endorsed more emotional expression "when alone" than "when with close others", demonstrating a social disconnection tendency, which was more evident in the Chinese sample. Bereaved people endorsed more expression of positive emotions (e.g. affection/love) and less expression of powerful negative emotions (e.g. blame/guilt, anger) across cultures. Compared to their Chinese counterparts, the German-speaking Swiss sample indicated more actual expressions for most emotion types (i.e. joy/happiness, affection/love, sadness, anger, and denial) but thought bereaved people should express more joy/happiness and less blame/guilt. The results suggest that bereaved people's display behaviours and rules are influenced by culture, situation, and type of emotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Psychological models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and prolonged grief disorder (PGD) make predictions about the role of unhelpful coping strategies in maintaining difficulties by blocking self-correction of negative appraisals and memory integration following stressful life events like bereavement. However, few studies have tested these predictions directly. Method: We used counterfactually based causal mediation to assess whether unhelpful coping strategies mediated the relationship between (1) loss-related memory characteristics and/or (2) negative grief-related appraisals and symptoms of PGD, PTSD and depression using a three-wave longitudinal sample (N = 275). Appraisals and memory characteristics were measured at time point 1, unhelpful coping strategies at T2, and symptom variables at T3. Additionally, multiple mediation analyses within a structural equation modelling (SEM) framework assessed which types of coping strategies differentially mediated symptoms of PGD, PTSD and depression. Results: Coping strategies mediated the relationship between negative appraisals and memory characteristics and symptoms of PGD, PTSD and depression after adjusting for demographics and loss characteristics. Sensitivity analyses suggested that these results were most robust for PGD, followed by PTSD and then depression. Multiple mediation analyses suggested that all four subscales (avoidance, proximity seeking, loss rumination and injustice rumination) individually mediated the effect of memory characteristics and appraisals on PGD. Conclusions: These results suggest that core predictions of the cognitive model for PTSD and the cognitive behavioural model of PGD are useful in predicting symptoms of post-loss mental health problems in the first 12–18 months after loss. Targeting unhelpful coping strategies is likely to reduce symptoms of PGD, PTSD and depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]