Abstract:
Background: mourning is a necessary activity after losing a loved one to death. An individual needs to be in touch with reality as well as be able to withdraw their attachment from the deceased through grief work. Unfortunately with the rapid processes of burying their dead, Muslims may not have the necessary “time-frame” to grieve and psychologically adjust to the loss. Method: A statistics analysis was performed to investigate if there was a correlation between anticipated loss and psychological adjustment among young Muslim students of the United States International University-Africa, to explore if there were any differences in the psychological adjustment of the first year undergraduate students compared to fourth year students’ prior anticipation of the grief and loss and to analyse any gender differences in the psychological adjustment between the Muslim male students and Muslim female students who had gone through anticipatory loss and grief. Results: The research results showed that indeed, there was a relationship between AG and psychological Adjustment. However there were no statistically significant differences in age or gender in psychological adjustment when the students experienced the anticipatory loss. Conclusion: There was no positive effect of anticipatory grief on psychological adjustment with either the male or female students. However, the importance of social support during the grieving period is re-enforced, so as to prevent any complication like complicated grief.
