Feel grief when a favorite TV show ends? You're not alone

A study found that fans of the Australian show “Neighbours” experienced genuine grief and loss after the show was canceled.

When the Australian soap opera “Neighbours” was canceled in 2022, it marked the end of a cultural institution that ran for 37 years. The homey setting in a fictitious suburb and the characters fans had come to love were suddenly all gone.

It was a loss that Adam Gerace, a senior psychology lecturer at Central Queensland University in Australia, wanted to know more about. So he asked almost 1,300 Australians how they were feeling about the show’s end.

“Fans were talking about the end of the series as if they were losing a friend,” he said.

Their reactions amounted to genuine experiences of grief and loss, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, of which Gerace is the author. 

Gerace created an online survey that asked fans if they had experienced emotions related to grief, such as anger or sadness, shortly after the final episode aired in 2022. (The show was revived in 2023 after the survey closed.) 

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/feel-grief-favorite-tv-show-ends-re-not-alone-rcna156456

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