Research articles examining psychological adjustment to spousal bereavement in older adults (65+) were identified through searches on five electronical databases alongside forward citation and reference list searches. A total of 15 articles involving 686 unique participants were identified. Five characteristics were discovered which can facilitate and inhibit psychological adjustment to spousal bereavement in older adults: the pre-loss spousal relationship, social support, finding meaning and spirituality in loss, the surviving spouse’s personality traits, and death characteristics. These findings support that concepts of ‘meaning making’ and social support should be incorporated into therapeutic work with bereaved spouses to help facilitate psychological adjustment.

通过搜索五个电子数据库以及前向引用和参考文献列表搜索，确定了研究老年人（65 岁以上）对配偶丧亲之痛的心理调整的研究文章。共识别出 15 篇文章，涉及 686 名独特的参与者。研究发现，有五个特征可以促进和抑制老年人对丧偶之痛的心理调整：丧偶前的配偶关系、社会支持、在丧亲中寻找意义和精神、尚存配偶的人格特征和死亡特征。这些发现支持“意义创造”和社会支持的概念应纳入丧亲配偶的治疗工作中，以帮助促进心理调整。