Abstract

Widowhood is a catastrophic event at any stage of life for the surviving partner at any age, with serious repercussions on their psychological well-being. Thus, this study examined the effect of pastoral counselling and social support on the psychological wellbeing of widows in Anglican Communion of Lagos State, Nigeria. Six research questions and corresponding hypotheses were generated and tested; data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and ANCOVA. The quasi-experimental pretest/posttest control group research design was adopted. The sample consisted of 92 widows. The first stage was the selection of one Anglican Diocese out of the four Dioceses in Lagos State using simple random sampling, through hat and draw method. The second stage involved using stratified random sampling technique to select three Archdeaconries from the selected Diocese in Lagos state. The third stage involved selection of widows with psychological wellbeing problems from each of the Archdeaconries selected using “The Bell Global Psychopathology Scale (BGPS)” and the “Widows’ Psychological Adjustment Scale (WPAS)” with 0.79 and 0.89 reliability coefficients respectively. The last stage involved purposive sampling technique to select all 92 identified widows with psychological wellbeing problems into two treatment groups and control group. The Pastoral Counselling and Social Support were used as treatments in the experimental groups. Bowlby’s attachment and Kubler-Ross Model theories were used as theoretical framework. The findings revealed that: post-test mean scores on aggression of participants significantly differ as a result of exposing them to pastoral counselling, social support and control group, and self-esteem post-test mean scores of participants exposed to pastoral counselling, social support and control group significantly differ.